As the sun set on Kawit, Cavite province, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo stood on the balcony of his ancestral home and read a litany of grievances against the Spaniards who colonized and ran the Philippines for more than three centuries.
The general’s lament formed the preface to his declaration of Philippine Independence, which is now 115 years old.
The misrule of a foreign power that Aguinaldo denounced finds a counterpart in our country’s currently fragile interior peace and uneasy relations with neighbors like Malaysia, Taiwan and China.
The Philippines may be a member of the United Nations but we need to work harder to be in step with the slogan, “Peace and prosperity.”
In the first quarter of 2013 we emerged the fastest growing Asian economy with a surge in gross domestic product of 7.8 percent, according to the National Statistical Coordination Board.
But the economic bullishness developed against the backdrop of an unchanging poverty rate and the highest unemployment figures within the last three years.
Paul VI used to say that peace is the work of justice. Our non-inclusive economic growth is a form of injustice that feeds our lack of peace.
As traders celebrate their gains, an estimated 30 million Filipinos scrounge below the poverty line. More than 11 million have no jobs.
The squalor and unemployment continue to fuel crime.
In Metro Manila, the crime rate plunged by nearly 60 percent from last year. On closer inspection the figure translates to 1,218 incidents in the capital crimes of murder, homicide, rape, robbery, theft and physical injuries, among others per interpretation of the Philippine National Police.
The authorities have yet to go beyond pegging the number of unregistered guns in the country at one million.
In the Queen City of Cebu, citizens need no chart to recognize the relationship between economic hardship and crime.
Time and time again, people are shot down by assasins who kill for a price.
The suspects in last week’s killings of traffic enforcer Armando Daligdig and PO2 Gerlito Estremos were men fired from the police force.
Locales in Cebu have figured repeatedly in global drug and human trafficking and cyberporn. The town of Cordova is a hotbed for home-based cyberporn trade involving children.
As a supposedly free nation the Philippines has had to lean on the US Department of Homeland Security for help in stopping cyberporn.
Will the country be as fortunate in its relations with neighbors which are marred by criminal affronts to its sovereignty?
How will we harness the power of diplomacy to stop Chinese incursions into our waters and the maltreatment of Filipinos in Taiwan and in Malaysia?
Fifteen and five score years since its declaration of independence the Philippines is besieged within and without by forces inimical to its freedom and peace.
We remember the heroes who shed their blood to secure us but we need new heroes who are astute enough to work with us for peace and prosperity as a nation and as a member of the free world.