Survive or Perish: AI, Credibility, and the Philippine Context
By Karl Garcia
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is not merely a technological shift. It is a systemic stress test for institutions, industries, and entire national ecosystems. AI forces a hard question:
Who can adapt — and who will be left behind?
But beneath the rhetoric of innovation lies a deeper truth often ignored in discussions about AI disruption:
Adaptation without credibility is fragility.
Speed without foundations is risk.
In high-trust domains — education, cybersecurity, healthcare information management, financial systems — survival requires more than digital adoption. It requires sequenced competence, operational discipline, and trust capital.
Academe: Innovate — But Ground Innovation in Reality
Universities now compete with AI tools that generate explanations, summaries, simulations, even assessments. The lecture monopoly is over.
Yet the threat to academe is not AI itself. It is irrelevant pedagogy.
Institutions that survive will:
✅ Integrate AI as a learning amplifier, not a shortcut
✅ Emphasize problem-solving, judgment, and ambiguity
✅ Embed case studies, simulations, and failure analysis
✅ Align curricula with industry realities
Those that persist in passive, lecture-heavy instruction risk producing graduates fluent in theory but untested in execution.
In an AI-saturated world, knowledge recall declines in value.
Applied reasoning rises.
Management & Industry: Agility Is Necessary — But Not Sufficient
AI promises efficiency, automation, predictive analytics, personalization. Firms are urged to “move fast.”
But agility detached from capability creates instability.
Sustainable winners will:
✅ Automate selectively, not indiscriminately
✅ Redesign workflows, not just overlay tools
✅ Invest in workforce reskilling
✅ Preserve human judgment where risk is high
Rigid organizations will struggle. But so will those that digitize recklessly without process maturity.
AI magnifies both intelligence and incompetence.
Cybersecurity & High-Trust Work: Credibility Cannot Be Rushed
Cybersecurity and HIT/HIM are not conventional outsourcing categories. They are credibility economies.
Clients silently ask:
• Have you handled failure?
• Have you managed live incidents?
• Can you operate under pressure?
Here, being “almost competent” is dangerous.
The temptation toward rapid certification and title inflation is particularly risky:
Certification → Title → Responsibility → Exposure gap
Entry-level operational roles — SOC monitoring, QA/testing, compliance support — remain indispensable because they build:
✅ Pattern recognition
✅ Escalation judgment
✅ Risk intuition
✅ Procedural discipline
Skipping this apprenticeship phase produces professionals whose authority outpaces their experience — a systemic vulnerability in high-risk sectors.
Military & Security: Decision Speed Meets Judgment
AI compresses decision cycles. Information processing accelerates. But speed without judgment invites disaster.
Effective adaptation requires:
✅ Decentralized decision frameworks
✅ Human oversight over AI recommendations
✅ Training in ambiguity and failure scenarios
✅ Integration of local intelligence
Technology enhances advantage only when institutions possess discipline and doctrine maturity.
Local Enterprises: Survival Through Digital and Community Adaptation
For SMEs and local enterprises, AI and digital tools offer lifelines — but not guarantees.
Resilience increasingly depends on:
✅ Digital-first engagement
✅ Hyper-local community alignment
✅ Agile marketing channels
✅ AI-assisted operations
Organizations anchored in community trust often outperform technically superior but socially disconnected competitors.
Philippine Implications: Opportunity Meets Structural Reality
For the Philippines, AI intensifies both promise and peril.
We possess:
✅ A large English-speaking workforce
✅ Deep BPO process discipline
✅ Cultural adaptability
✅ Growing digital talent
But we also face persistent risks:
❌ Title inflation ahead of competence
❌ Overreliance on certifications as endpoints
❌ Weak industry–academe feedback loops
❌ Undervaluing operational apprenticeship
Education
AI integration is no longer optional. Institutions must shift from memorization-centric models toward:
• Applied problem-solving
• Simulation-based learning
• Industry-embedded instruction
• Critical thinking under uncertainty
Graduates must be prepared for collaboration with AI, not competition against it.
BPO & Labor Transformation
With over 1.5 million workers, the BPO sector sits at the center of AI disruption.
Vulnerable functions:
❌ Routine voice support
❌ Basic content moderation
❌ Repetitive back-office processing
Emerging opportunities:
✅ AI-assisted customer experience
✅ Compliance and governance support
✅ Data annotation and AI training
✅ Hybrid human-AI review roles
The challenge is reskilling at scale — before displacement overtakes adaptation.
Cybersecurity & HIT/HIM
Rather than chasing elite positioning prematurely, the Philippines can build credibility through:
✅ AI-augmented SOC operations
✅ Cloud governance & compliance support
✅ Healthcare data quality & analytics
✅ Mid-tier scalable security functions
Credibility compounds through reliability, not declarations.
National Security & Governance
AI offers tools for:
• Maritime domain awareness
• Disaster response optimization
• Logistics planning
• Fraud detection
But institutional discipline determines whether AI becomes a force multiplier or an expensive distraction.
The Real Survival Formula
Across sectors, survival in the AI era rests on:
✅ Strategic agility
✅ Operational discipline
✅ Community relevance
✅ Continuous learning
✅ Credibility accumulation
AI is a selective force. It rewards those who combine technological adoption with grounded competence.
Conclusion
The Philippines stands at a familiar crossroads — accelerated by AI, intensified by global competition.
The question is no longer:
“Will AI reshape our institutions?”
But:
“Will we pursue adaptation anchored in credibility — or chase speed at the expense of trust?”
In high-trust digital economies:
Competence must be layered.
Experience must precede authority.
Credibility must be earned.
AI will not decide who survives.
Our discipline will.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
CHED updates its curriculum every 11 years.
No wonder there is so much job mismatch.
https://www.philstar.com/opinion/2026/02/21/2509347/when-and-how-do-we-improve-higher-education-curriculum
If higher education is on a stand still what is all tgis emplpyability of k12 graduates all about.
https://mb.com.ph/2026/02/23/a-roadmap-to-transform-the-country-from-fast-ai-adopters-to-sovereign-builders
The Philippine data center industry is undergoing a structural transformation as it accelerates toward a “Road to 1GW” capacity target, positioning the country as an emerging digital and AI infrastructure hub in Southeast Asia. Spearheaded by the Data Center Association of the Philippines and reinforced by government initiatives such as the Department of Information and Communications Technology Digital Cities 2025 program and the National AI Strategy Roadmap 2.0, the sector is attracting billions in investment aimed at hyperscale and AI-ready facilities. New campuses in Cavite and Laguna, alongside flagship builds like ePLDT’s VITRO developments and expansions by ST Telemedia Global Data Centres Philippines, illustrate a shift from traditional colocation toward GPU-intensive, cloud-scale workloads. Policy tailwinds—including 100% foreign ownership liberalization, CREATE MORE Act incentives, and Green Lane permitting—are lowering barriers to entry, while renewable energy procurement is becoming central to managing power costs and ESG pressures. Despite challenges such as high electricity prices, grid constraints, and climate-related risks, the industry’s trajectory reflects deepening digitalization, rising AI demand, and a strategic push to decentralize infrastructure beyond Metro Manila, signaling a pivotal decade for Philippine digital competitiveness.
Rather exciting times. The cutting edge of the cutting edge. Hope it goes well.
I hope so as well
These are the two new submarine fiber cable systems coming online soon, and will feature the Philippines as one of the important nodes on the way to Singapore. Bifrost’s Davao fiber landing will be “owned” by Converge but controlled by Singaporean Keppel.
https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/trans-pacific/bifrost
https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/intra-asia/candle
Being a node in a cable system is one thing though. Plugging into and availing the bandwidth across the Philippines is another thing and requires infrastructure build-out.
IIRC as of 2022 the Philippines opened up the telecom industry to 100% foreign owned ventures. On one side of the coin this is “good” because it will give Filipinos and Philippine businesses access to digital infrastructure. The good or bad of the flip side is indeterminate when domestic entities no longer control the infrastructure due to lack of domestic investment.
Thanks mucho
I have mentored a lot of young people interested in IT and business. My mantra is “there is no replacement for experience.” Additionally, “be the user of tools, don’t be the tool, because the tool can be replaced.”
When I started out it was common for enterprises to have in-house server rooms, some small, some very large. Rows of server racks tended by technicians who had to SSH into each individual server to monitor services. Then service dashboards were developed which replaced half of the technicians. Unified dashboards replaced even more. Now it isn’t uncommon to have one technician remotely monitoring thousands of servers and thousands more virtual machines.
I was part of the “first generation” that developed and used QA tools, which eventually replaced entire QA teams. Those old QA teams were simply “button pushers” who carried out test plans anyway, and button pushing became automated first by in-house developed then enterprise-grade testing software.
Filipino BPO workers following a script is not a particularly high-value task. After all, the position low in the value chain is precisely why American call center agents were replaced by cheaper Indian, then Filipino agents.
Unsurprisingly the Indians took the lessons of their low-value BPO work to its logical conclusion to pivot towards helping to *develop the tools* necessary for CS. This took a period of almost 20 years. The one who uses the tool is not easily replaced. The one who makes the tools can’t be replaced at all because new tools can be invented by the tool maker. But the one who uses tools in a mechanical fashion can first be replaced by cheaper human labor, then by machines.
I fear the time is late for the Philippines BPO industry to pivot. What comes ahead will be an economic bloodbath which anti-democratic forces like the pro-China set will surely take advantage of.
I just asked ChatGPT what kind of tools India has developed recently and was amazed even as someone who should already know:
I asked ChatGPT a follow up question on the SaaS stuff and got this answer:
So the Philippines is one to two decades behind India, who have gone from tools thru tool users to tool makers.
Thabks
I asked ChatGPT how the Philippines could build in the five areas mentioned and got this answer:
Oh jeez, Jetpack ate my comment. I may re-type it later.
https://restofworld.org/2025/philippines-offshoring-automation-tech-jobs/ this is interesting BTW, it is about Filipino teleworkers running convenience store robots in Japan via VR headsets and suffering from motion sickness as a result.
(I do know of your skepticism regarding the Philippines being able to level up and tend to agree, but maybe the country should at least try this time)
These human “pilots” are just trainers for the AI model that will eventually replace them. Cheap labor for training models is also common in Bengal and parts of Africa.
I found the comments from the Sofi AI guy to be ironically interesting though. His company is making an AI tool that aims to replace low salary Filipino workers yet he takes a high horse position.
On my skepticism, I’ve never believed there was a limit on the Filipino, but the Filipino is limited by the Philippines system. Place a Filipino anywhere else in the world and usually they will thrive like any other human that is afforded opportunity. How to change the Philippines system so Filipinos can thrive at home with more access to opportunity is the hard unanswered question… there is a role for government to play in this change, but then we have the Catch-22 of needing a better government to be installed in the first place. So it’s back to the basics of educating Filipinos on the individual agency to demand change that they each hold. There needs to be a new Thomasite Revolution, not a new nationalist renewal.
I sometimes wonder if human pilots who mainly operates drones day in and day out also suffer from cyber sickness or motion sickness! and maybe one day, drones wont need human pilots at all! drone being able to self manage and maybe countermand their human handlers too.
Cyber sickness is a type of simulator sickness. This has been around since the beginning of video games which allowed full 3D motion. I recall the seminal video game “Descent” (1995) had a lot of gamers back then being affected. Simulator sickness mostly affects those who are not acclimated to virtual motion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulator_sickness
Something that happens more on a daily basis is for example, today I was sitting in the car which was in a parking stall. As I was about to shift into reverse the car beside me reversed out of its stall without me anticipating it. I felt a momentary panic that my own car was moving without human control and stepped on the brake pedal. This is an example of an invalid perception of self-motion that is common in simulator sickness.
good reflexes you’ve got! not all drivers have that, braking just on time.
I hate electric cars, I can barely hear them moving about and next thing I know, they’re behind me and beside me, so eerily quiet and disorienting. and I hate their drivers even more, smiling at me like they wanted to be slapped! what can poor me do, but to smile back and pray their lithium ion battery catch fire, haha!
may god, forgive me.
I used to (street and highway) race fixer-upper Japanese cars and motorcycles when I was younger, when there was a proper system of racing rather than the hooliganism of nowadays of the kids whose parents buy them expensive sports cars.
My daily driver car is a plug-in hybrid. Given its 80 km electric range I’m in electric mode most of the time. I hear you though. There is a comfort in hearing the drone of a petrol motor which is absent in electric cars.
Well the nice thing about modern automotive driver assist systems is that the car brakes safely and immediately if it detects an incoming collision, high-speed or otherwise like in a car-pedestrian scenario. Unless the car is a Tesla, in which case the car will just continue through and crash itself.
The late Edgar Lores once wrote that there needs to be something like the Japanese Meiji Restoration, which would be something nationalistic yet knowledge-based and forward-looking, not “culture-based” and backward-looking like a lot of Filipino nationalism.
At this point the issue isn’t just that those abroad often won’t go back to help the country, it is often that even those with more knowledge in the Philippines are NOT at all listened to by most Filipinos. There is a huge hostility to any form of knowledge that seems preachy and arrogant – or is seen as not applicable to the Philippine situation by most people. There is a commenter and contributor here who works or worked on Wall Street who went on lurk mode from 2019 onwards and said “what can we do if they want to be carabaos”. And most of us unlike you don’t know better ways of planting kamote. Even the fall of BPO might not teach the country anything. I have seen comments on YT videos on BPO being threatened saying “finally those social climbers will be put in their place”. DDS mindset of course is based on the lowest common denominator of what is Filipino, including those who budots in front of Digong’s jail cell here in Europe.
yeah, I think, I know the commenter you mean, I once accused said commenter of running a troll farm! though said commenter is certainly not dds, cannot stand a competition for narcissism who must always be right. I am betting said commenter is huffing and puffing vs duterte at the hauge. used to be hater of marcos too the said commenter is. but quite articulate and glib talker.
The thing about the Meiji Restoration was that the shogunate was just replaced by a military junta. That military junta did industrially modernize though by using nationalistic themes of honoring the Japanese emperor and Japanese samurai culture for the military and technical class, but not for the commoner class. Unfortunately that project didn’t work out that well for Asia and the Japanese themselves…
If the Japanese are looked to for inspiration then perhaps the 1947 Japanese Constitution would be a good study. The Japanese once again reinterpreted themselves in the post-War period. Japanese culture associated with the samurai was diffused to commoners, which is where the Japanese have both sides bowing in the old respect ceremony, but the side with more power just bows a little less. The parents of a Japanese girlfriend would use the honorific “dono” of the old middle nobility when they spoke to me despite their higher social and economic position.
It is not necessary for the Philippines to cast away Filipino culture. It is only necessary for the Philippines to reinterpret “Filipino-ness” to suit modernity and going into the future. Rather than envying and trying to emulate the West, or even Asian neighbors, whose progress has proceeded to demoralizing distance, perhaps the Philippines should look for modernizing inspiration “closer to home.” Malaysia and Indonesia also grappled with their own cultural identity and made it work in a modern world. Malaysia has been much more successful in this regard, having connection to MSEA through the Malay Peninsula constituting roughly half of Malaysia territory. Indonesia has struggled more with their own version of “pinoy pride” (for history watchers, who could forget the episode when Sukarno could not be shamed in the “Happy Days” incident, and actually enthusiastically requested copies of the film from the CIA), but in the recent two decade have started to find their national footing.
I have also seen the comments you refer to in the YouTube BPO commentary. Perhaps deep down in the less-Westernized Filipino (that is to say, almost all Filipinos), there is a desire to “become datu.” On my recent trek through Mindanao, I observed the hilarious (non-)progress in building a “Maharlika hall” of a local men’s group (ahem, cult) which are not at all uncommon among the rural masa. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be the “datu” of their own life and destiny? The question is how to harness that innate and infrangible desire from its negative aspects into something positively productive that will move the nation forward.
there is medication for motion sickness but the more one is expose to movements, the body adapts and motion sickness becomes manageable and occurring less and less. but if there is underlying cause of motion sickness such as vertigo, menieres’s disease, or abnormalities in the inner ear, teleworkers may need to consider their option.
🤣😂🤣😱🍺🍺
Sadly the Philippines is actually more than two decades behind India. The Philippines IT-BPM industry (which is really just a *BPO industry*) does not know this, but India’s BPO portion of its IT-BPM industry alone is at $54 billion in FY2025 is worth more than the supposed “BPO Capital of the World” with $38 billion in FY2025. When one zooms out to the *actual* IT-BPM industry (not just BPO), India reached $282 billion in FY2025. At the turn of the new millennium, India was only slightly ahead of the Philippines in BPO revenues, roughly $2.5 billion to $1 billion. India simply moved ahead with higher value services while the Philippines basked in its own laurels despite not upgrading capability.
https://www.philstar.com/business/2026/01/30/2504376/vietnam-malaysia-compete-it-bpm-market
The comments from IBPAP President and CEO Jack Madrid regarding incoming competition are, shall we say, interesting. The disregard of competition from Vietnam, then mis analyzing the strengths of Malaysia. I guess Jack Madrid does not know that a considerable population of Vietnamese and Vietnamese of Chinese descent speak Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka, and so on, due to both the historical connection and the connection of proximity. I mean, I speak Spanish, which is a useful language as Mexico is less than 2 hours away from where I live. Millennial and GenZ Vietnamese all speak English, and in addition many speak Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean as well. In Vietnam, English education is *compulsory* from G3-G12 and will be compulsory starting in G1 in 2030. In addition Vietnam’s education system mandates a *third* language as an elective for those same school years, with the most popular languages studied being French, Japanese and Mandarin. And Vietnamese people don’t sprinkle in out-of-context English words as a prestige marker like what is done in Taglish or Bislish. They simply speak fully in whatever language.
I looked up some statistics and it looks like for FY2025 Vietnam hit $1 billion in BPO-only revenues and is projected to rapidly grow. Where the Philippines was in 2000. But if one zooms out to the overall Vietnamese IT-BPM industry, revenue was $198 billion in FY2025. While trade association presidents like IBPAP’s don’t seem that concerned.
FY2025 IT-BPM Industry (Outsourced business processes and IT services): • India — $282 billion
• Philippines — $38 billion
• Vietnam — $1 billion
• Malaysia — $12.32 billion
• Indonesia — $210.65 million
FY2025 ICT Industry (Information and Communication Technology, including consulting services):
• India — $350 billion
• Philippines — $2.5 billion
• Vietnam — $198 billion
• Malaysia — $28.65 billion
• Indonesia — $48.91 billion
Astounding.
P.S. I have heard common industry epithet: the Philippines is the “BPO Capital of the World” repeated as gospel truth by affluent Filipino friends over the years when I’m in the Philippines. I never looked much into *who* first described the Philippines in such a way so I did some looking around.
I found it odd that all Philippine-origin citations either do not state a source, or were doing circular citations. After more digging it appears some Filipino analysts and news sources point to the Philippines being first called the “BPO Capital of the World” in IBM’s Global Locations Trends annual report (2010 edition).
I read IBM’s Global Locations Trends every year, and did read the 2010 report back then. I didn’t recall any of this so I found a 2010 copy:
Click to access ibm_global_location_trends_report_2010.pdf
On page 6 of the 2010 report:
“For business support functions (such as shared services and business process outsourcing)
the Philippines has taken over the lead in the global ranking from India, after having challenged the top position for several years”
There is no where in the report which states that the Philippines is the “BPO Capital of the World!”
So I’ll write this off as another case of self-promotion as is the penchant there. I guess at best self-promotion can be viewed as self-marketing, but at which point does self-promotion cross into empty boasting? If one believes oneself to be “the best” already, one may not see competition eventually gaining ground, becoming shocked at what was predictable when a competitor passes by.
Interesting article on state capacity by former neoconservative thinker Francis Fukuyama, who later refuted neoconservatism and neoliberal economics, advocating instead for social democracy and classical liberalism. This article uses examples from the American system and US history, but in many ways the Philippines copies American trends with a slight lag. In any case, the Philippines has never really built a robust state capacity to begin with so the ideas here are relevant.
I have bolded the points I thought to be pertinent to the Philippine context. Both the video and the written version of the article as follows:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-188407688
Much obliged.
we have had convos here on how the USA is basically “libertarian” and that kind of sums it up. Europeans tend to see the so-called “deep state” as something necessary, for example. The USA has government shutdowns – while Spain’s administration once ran without a government for a while recently:
https://apnews.com/general-news-8326b5965fa34983ac18a6728d52d22c
The Philippines is a bit schizophrenic I guess in having a confused mix of libertarian attitudes like the USA – AND “heavy state”, not even modern “deep state” attitudes dating back to Spanish colonial times. So it was hard to get the national ID (normal in most Asian and European countries, the exception UK is due to similar Anglo-Saxon traditions) decided on in the Philippines due to “freedom” but people are still burdened with cedula, NBI clearance and more stuff at the same time. So the Philippines has a state that manages to be both controlling and weak. The recently floated suggestion to give MTCRB jurisdiction over streaming content (facepalm!) versus the inability to implement proper urban planning in Metro Manila – for example. And underneath the schizophrenia of libertarianism versus extreme statism you have the old barangay mindset and datuism, completing a totally confused country.
Well the US was founded nearly a century before the modern meaning of “libertarian” which had descended from French Revolutionary far-left and anarchist politics. French Revolutionaries swung wildly left and right, which is why today “libertarian” tends to mean “right-libertarianism” although “left-libertarianism” still exists too.
The government shutdowns in the US system is a byproduct of Greco-Roman style republicanism where parliamentary disagreement meant political gridlock, which a European-style parliamentary system does not have.
I see the Philippines political system a bit differently. From my viewpoint the Philippines system is datu-ism with the ornamental trappings of American republicanism. The confusion is in the inability to reconcile two incompatible systems, one which is the actual system and the other which is the system that is performed publicly.
This account by MLQ3 is part of the big picture of what the Philippines is – at least some in the 3rd Republic did try to establish a real republic and some at the start of the 5th republic tried to re-establish something like that, but as MLQ3 wrote, one can never go back.. (Xiao Chua who is Yellow/Pink but also Pantayong Pananaw adherent has tried to define Magsaysay as a kind of democratic rajah of PH, he does seem to realize the tension between these ideas)
I dont know if ninoy aquino had foreseen that the current 1987 constitution will face many challenges resulting in deaths and loss of lived, loss of properties, etc. that the philippines is evolving, with filipinos communists hungered for revolution but never got it fully.
AI Overview
As of early 2026, the Bill of Rights in the Philippines (Article III of the 1987 Constitution) faces significant challenges that stem from a culture of impunity, aggressive counter-insurgency policies, and the weaponization of law against dissenters. While the Marcos Jr. administration has seen a slight reduction in high-profile killings compared to the Duterte era, structural issues persist, with human rights organizations reporting that violations have continued, particularly through “red-tagging” and the targeting of activists.
Here are the key current challenges to the Bill of Rights in the Philippines:
1. “Red-Tagging” and Threats to Life and Security
2. Impunity and Extrajudicial Killings (EJKs)
3. Attacks on Freedom of Press and Expression
4. Due Process and Arbitrary Detention
5. Other Key Rights Challenges
Recent Developments (2025–2026)
Supreme Court Action: In early 2026, the Supreme Court remained active in handling cases related to the International Criminal Court’s warrant against former President Duterte, highlighting a tense relationship between local accountability and international legal standards
Election-Related Violence: Ahead of the May 2025 mid-term elections, there was a surge in red-tagging and political violence, particularly in the Bangsamoro region.
There is of course the DDS argument that human rights is not a native Filipino idea but some kind of “woke Western nonsense” – just like we have had Robin Padilla recently saying that his generation did not need any idea of mental health struggles but learned everything from the street.
Dr. Xiao Chua mentioning that there is the Filipino idea of “kapwa” but that concept is flawed already as many Filipinos don’t see anyone outside their family or immediate community as kapwa, it shocked me how many were NOT shocked at the pictures of tokhang victims all over social media.
I even joked here when there was a commenter saying Filipinos must find their own consensus on values that we can start by agreeing not to eat people, maybe.
of course we were shocked and but kept a stoic face, our umbrage mostly kept to ourselves else we would be the next victim. we learned from de lima et al not to attract attention or suffer the consequences of trumped up charges, our names added to duterte’s dreaded narco lists.
and we kept tally of deaths, kept our eyes on perpetrators and advice our kapwa not to be target, but when accosted, to cooperate and let anyone knew of their whereabouts so their families can be informed. self help publications were published to inform our kapwa what their rights were under duterte’s regime, our commissioner of human rights walked a very fine line, voicing concerns of illegal detention and unnecessary deaths.
and then, in secret and when no one was looking, our legal rep slipped to netherland and successfully filed a case vs duterte re crime against humanity.
repeat, we were shocked and kept our counsel to ourselves, in those dark days we had dark thoughts that our neighbors might not be who we thought they were. and the best way we to keep ourselves safe was to keep mum and pretend were were shockproof and not affected by anything.
thanks for this! BTW I am lowkey keeping track of news on the confirmation of charges hearings in The Hague.
The YT video below from Voice of Germany (Deutsche Welle) sums up the situation as of now nicely:
P.S. this tweet is also important: https://x.com/chronikrissys/status/2026518454807695625
thanks, there has been quite a number of vexatious disinfo circulating here and in the hauge mainly from dds, vs pbbm, vs duterte’s victims, vs de lima, vs trillanes, etc. even robin padilla’s daughter allegedly makisawsaw din po and diverting attention from the hearing to herself and her father like they were more newsworthy.
duterte’s hearing is being taken away and buried deep and far away from national headlines supposedly to dupe filipinos from knowing what truly goes on in the hague, maligning the victims and spreading falsehoods about the new suitcases of money that bagmen supposedly had delivered given to de lima, pbbm and others.
we are aware of the misinfo only all too well, and very well funded they are too. kaso these spreader are of dubious character and we barely pay them attention. deserving only of our scorn.
I am wondering how many of the Filipinos over here who are quite scattered believe in the fake news, because somehow the DDS over here in Europe still manage to pull a small crowd, enough to make a small budots party in summer and a few more again now that spring is on its way.
Well, a lot of Filipinos in Germany actually believed that Imelda had a chance of winning the 1992 Philippine elections, way back then.
dds have their own hakot crowd much as marcos. and that got me thinking too. feb 25 was 40th edsa anniversary which marcos declared a special working holiday where no work no pay applies. but people here ignored him, celebrated edsa and did not go to work. a day without pay when the nation’s conscience is at stake – priceless!
and at the same, here at tsoh right on the same day as edsa’s 40th anniversary, a stellar article about power shaker imelda marcos take center stage! got me drift po?
filipinos believing in fake news? that belief is not absolute, here to day, gone tomorrow. we maybe scattered but we talk at lot among ourselves, distance is not really problem. we have the internet now and almost all of us own cellphones. plus we have friends, know somebodies and we network a lot, people may call it gossips, but that is how we process info. not all gossips are malingering, some have hidden meaning for those who can read between the lines.
I think too that dds have more to celebrate these days: their tatay digong is being judged and may forever lost his freedom, thank god! and his daughter is being judged too, and may even be barred from public office, thank god again. happy days for them all. merrily, merrily, the noose is closing merrily.
I highly respect MLQ III but he at times (understandably) paints the Third Republic project his grandfather was a part of in a better light.
It may be a moral imperative to expand suffrage, but what is the cost if the citizenry is not prepared beforehand and maintained afterward? In other countries suffrage was expanded partly due to moral correctness, but also because the population was prepared through education before the expansion.
There may have been a reason why the American administration in 1901 conditioned suffrage on property ownership and education, while at the same time engaged in expanding universal primary education.
The 1935 (Commonwealth) Constitution expanded suffrage to all males, Filipino males who then voted in the 1937 plebiscite to expand suffrage to Filipino females.
Yet the Philippines did not institute universal secondary education until the 1988 Free Public Secondary Education Act. The US passed on a state-by-state basis mandatory secondary education starting in the Antebellum years in 1852; universal secondary education was put into federal law in 1918 by which time all US states already had mandatory secondary education in state law.
Sometimes I wonder if the Third Republic, which was clearly idealistic in wanting to create a modern republican form of government, was able to overcome the inherent self-interest of keeping people uninformed and thus politically pliable over working on higher forms of persuasion needed to convince the informed.
Benjamin Franklin once wrote to his friend the English poet and moralist Samuel Johnson:
“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
— Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Samuel Johnson, July 23, 1749
The reality of Philippine public education which THEORETICALLY started with a decree of Queen Isabel in the mid-1800s (which was implemented only spottily) and was continued in American times and built on during the time of Quezon, building schools and getting literacy up to over 50% just after WW2 was that a public school teacher from Cagayan in the 1970s, a cousin of our maid and niece of our labandera, preferred to work as a maid for us then leave for HK to work as a maid. Her lived reality was that she had to go up mountains to teach kids who spoke neither Ilokano nor Tagalog nor English, just Ibanag or Itawis – for little pay. Even now there are teachers and pupils in the Philippines whose unofficial anthem seems to be the Motown classic “Ain’t no Mountain High Enough”.
P.S. suffrage in the 1935 Constitution was restricted to the LITERATE. The 1973 Constitution abolished that requirement (I recall vividly how illiterate voters back then “signed” with their fingerprint and I think voting age was reduced to 16 for barangay elections for a while) and the 1986 Constitution stayed that way.
Here in the US the current political crisis is the result of the slow strangulation of public education starting with Nixon’s Southern Strategy and later accelerated with Reagan’s Reagan Revolution. In the “Red” states public education has been so degraded it effectively serves as a guarantee of near-permanent Republic Party control. After Obama’s 2008 victory the Republican Party started pushing local governments in “Blue” states first for private charter schools, then “school vouchers” that convert public resources into privatized sources of power in exclusionary private “Christian” schools. By the way, the “Christian” school (i.e. Southern Evangelical, now also nondenominational Born Again which came from Southern Evangelicalism) was one of the primary methods by which racist White Americans who did not want to racially integrate their public schools following the 1964 Civil Rights Act to continue racial segregation. The result is a public citizenry in the affected states and areas who vote on emotion, not universal morality or reason-based pragmatism. So the work of maintaining an educated citizenry does require the huge effort of maintenance and cannot be a “one and done” like things are often done in the Philippines.
AFAIK Marcos Sr. abolished the literacy voting requirement in 1973 because he had a greater base of power in the masa who depended on ayuda and were wowed by displays of power rather than the middle class who started questioning the Marcos Sr. regime as the economic situation started showing cracks. Of course I think it would be immoral to restrict the right to vote today for any reason, but that doesn’t change the need to educate the citizenry in order to maintain an informed electorate. Otherwise, people will just vote on emotion and displays of power.
https://x.com/pos2only/status/2024348270924120481 the sequel to this article on X has not yet come out today as promised, but I am sharing it here again for reference.
https://x.com/pos2only/status/2026281270461030531 the sequel:
Part Two seems to align with what I suspected about the next “leg of the stool” (OFW remittances) in my previous comment on Part One.
One needs to wonder: Is the failure to escape the Middle-Income Trap a case of a lethargic elite, intentional neglect, or both?
It seems to me that the advantages the US gave to the Philippines began to be squandered starting in the late Third Republic by an increasingly enfeebled elite. Marcosian crony capitalism which accelerated after the declaration of Martial Law and the seizure of foreign-owned (i.e. American-owned) assets after 1973 was appears to be only a secondary causal effect, but not the primary cause. It is too simplistic to blame everything on the bad deeds of Marcos Sr. and his cronies.
Indeed many countries that had experienced economic collapse turned to exporting labor in the short term. Marcos Sr. instituted the first formal labor export policy, but why was the export of labor continued for so long after the establishment of the Fifth Republic until this present day into a policy of sending away the best Filipinos the Philippines has to offer? Too many families, which I have observed personally, suffer separation and are kept in perpetual survival mode.
Now I have lightly criticized the hyper-consumerism of the dependents “back home,” but who is more to blame: those who suffer and don’t know any better way, or those who are contented in maintaining control over a system which profits from the hyper-consumerism they sell in the malls and brands they own using the oligopoly on imports they control?
South Korea and Taiwan at different stages had also depended on remittances from the export of their labor after those countries’ respective civil wars. Vietnam in the 1980s through 2000s depended on remittances from Overseas Vietnamese who left in the Exodus of the Boat People. In those countries remittances were put invested towards educating family members and building small businesses. Family members who stayed behind, poor as they may have been, still had work.
Meanwhile in the Philippines there is little government effort in creating enough jobs and increasing employment. Maybe that is the only way the “modern datus” can maintain power in the first place by creating artificial dependence.
There is no need to create domestic industry that lasts when remittances and BPO salaries fuel a consumption of survival for cheap imported goods. A lot of these elites have secondary homes in Hong Kong, the US, Canada, Australia, Europe. Maybe if and when the next social upheaval happens many of them will flee once again.
Just sad all around.