Pick up the Shovel

In my previous posts, I gave some ideas... some analysis and opinion about the Philippine situation and some thoughts on how to solve it. The general idea was to get people to open their minds about the gravity of where the country stands, to make people think because like kindness, ideas are rarely original but when circulated can get the ball rolling.

It is increasingly frustrating to stand in the sidelines and watch how we destroy this beautiful land. Can we even imagine how much foreigners love to bask in the sun which we have an abundance? Can we even in a minute realize, how rich and beautiful these islands are? Yet here we stand, the land isn't greener abroad. Its already green here but our madness is killing us.

How pathetically sad.

The issues of the day are escort services and twenty year old graft cases. I am not saying that these issues are not important nor am I saying this is no cause to question our society's morality. I am saying these issues are but effects--- they fall secondary to our end goal, not the cause and we must strike at the cause. I am saying that we have better things to do than act all clean--- we are all sinners, such matters can be sorted out later.

I read an issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, a few months back. They had the top ten companies from South East Asia. In Hong Kong, most on the list were the banks. In Malaysia, mixed, but mostly Tech as well as in Korea. In Thailand, some food manufacturers and in Japan, manufacturing. How pathetically sad--- in the Philippines we had telecoms, media giants, a drug retailer (not a pharmaceutical manufacturer), food and beverage giant (which was good) and my point? These are not income generating industries. These are all targeting the consumer market.

Where are the industries that we can export products: software, electronics, cars, car parts, agricultural products just to name a few. Instead, we rely on the millions of workers abroad to keep this nation afloat.

We need to change how we do business here. We need to give people an opportunity here.

An Indian supplier of my company was here about a week ago (from date of this posting) and he worked here 3 years ago... and he was telling me that in the Philippines, we don't even have companies that make buttons (for clothes) and why is that? Its cheaper to import than to manufacture. More difficult to manufacture--- high cost of labor, terrible political climate, huge uncertainty all around.

A Makati businessman during one of our meetings was mentioning that graft is so corrupting that we need radical solutions. He was even proposing legalization of graft--- that officials be entitled to 10%. Indeed, we need radical solutions.

We need to get our act together. We need leadership, not tomorrow but yesterday. We need to set our agenda straight now. These problems will not go away in this generation. It will take 20 years just to set the proper course (but that's the fun part). We need radical solutions. We need to do it, yesterday or this country will be relegated to irrelevance.

God is already helping us--- how can I know that? For a start, He has already given us a great land to till. We just need to pick up the shovel and start working this land.

Prove to me that I'm not right.