Review: A Country Imperiled by Cecilio Arillo

Cecilio Arillo’s Greed and Betrayal was one of the seminal works that attempt to expose the first Aquino government as a corrupt regime bent on revenge and self-enrichment. His method in the book was merely dropping of facts, following his training as a journalist. Later on, I heard he had released a new book to follow up his work.

First Impressions: A Country Imperiled by Cecilio Arillo

I just got a copy of the book “A Country Imperiled” by Cecilio Arillo. These are my first impressions of it :

The Bus Hostage Crisis: A Failure of Filipino Culture

The Manila Bus Hostage Incident/Massacre was no isolated incident. It was an effect of everything our culture stands for. Our Filipino values, our system, our beliefs and of course, our corruption, all played into the event and caused the massive failure that led to the deaths of eight Hong Kong nationals. Every step of the story, from the culture that led to the action of Mendoza to the reaction of our flippant president and our people to the incident, shows how destructive our cultural failures are and how these same factors are keeping our country from moving forward.

Misplaced Pride

First is Mendoza. He was certainly wrong. Filipinos want to say that he was not a Filipino that day he took hostages. But that is wrong; he is every bit as Filipino as every other Filipino is, and he represented us that day. He was born Filipino, raised Filipino and died a Filipino. He is a product of Filipino culture.

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Pointless Anti-Glorianism

I was recently told that the ZTE scam was really because the ZTE company of China actually offered very cheap DSL. It may have been a good plan. But the oligarchs (our local big business owners from prominent families) felt threatened and thus used their puppets in government to make a mess of it. They decided to make up a story that the corruption involved was massive and that ZTE is the greatest evil. I think this is the most likely picture of the ZTE scandal. I don't think corruption was completely absent, but it certainly was exaggerated, and used to cover up the corruption of the oligarchs themselves.

Also, the oligarchs were quick to make an enemy of a foreign entity. They're quick to make enemies of foreign businesses, which have better quality. Oligarchs are afraid of this competition, because it will force them to stop being lazy and will make them improve their businesses... not just in services, but in treatment of employees as well. So they decided to throw off the trail on ZTE to another "blameable" - outgoing president Gloria M. Arroyo.

I don't say GMA's camp is free of corruption. But they are certainly being overrated as the enemy of the country. The oligarchs are the ones. They are making a mess of Philippine politics in order to protect their manipulation of the country. They're leading attention off to GMA so they can work their magic undetected by all but the most vigilant of watchers. They're keeping out foreign investments to make sure that these foreign interests do not break their rule over people's lives here.

All this anti-Glorianism is pointless. Some people believe that getting GMA out of office will be a big step in solving the country's problems. But this is a scapegoat leading off people from the true cause of our poorly performing economy - the protectionist parts of our law that actually inhibit foreign investments, and which prevent good jobs from appearing in our country. Thus, many people are forced to go OFWing for good jobs.

The recent gesture of president-elect Noynoy Aquino to refuse the new Chief Justice as his oath-receiver is what I perceive as an act of hatred and arrogance. The Noynoy camp may accuse its critics of being hate and arrogance-driven, but when you look at the other side, they're the ones who based their campaign on it. It's also aimed only to spite GMA. If this is the first action a newly-elected president will do, then the true issues about our country's problems will be flushed down the crapper.