“Jose Rizal's Hidden Discourse Against Charter Change”

by David Michael M. San Juan

(published at NEWSBREAK Online Magazine and

ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs Website – June 2009)

Boring speeches extolling the national hero’s patriotism, altruism, idealism,

internationalism and other isms will be heard again come June 19 as the country
celebrates Jose Protacio Rizal’s 148th birth anniversary. But as circumspect observers
have noted, seasonal and pompous official commemoration that puts Rizal in the
pedestal serves to alienate him and his ideals from the common folks. It’s as if Rizal has
lived in a so distant era that many Filipinos could no longer identify with what typical
writers and orators claim he stands for. Amidst the token “motherhood statements”
accorded his status, Rizal has become out of common touch and seemingly superfluous
in these times when charter change and other political issues dominate the national and
popular discourse.

An endeavor to bring him closer to the people is suitable in these turbulent

times. His ideas on politics and governance could be this nation’s guiding light to the
way of genuine justice, peace, progress and prosperity, and away from the chaotic road
of charter change, corruption and maladministration. The best way to jumpstart this
tedious process is to revisit his writings, including his esteemed novels Noli Me Tangere
and El Filibusterismo. Since public interest on charter change has drastically increased
as a result of the House of Representatives’ railroaded approval of House Resolution
(HR) No. 1109, figuring out Rizal’s probable stance on various constitutional
amendments is in order.
Parity rights for foreigners: Anathema to national progress and survival

Proponents of charter change assured the public that their proposed

constitutional amendments cover only economic provisions, as if the eradication of
national patrimony and the granting of parity rights to foreigners are harmless to
Filipinos. In fact, they are frank enough to admit in the concluding statement of HR No.
1109 that their only concrete charter change proposal is an economic one aimed at
raising the global competitiveness of the country “in attracting foreign investments and
technology transfers.” Impliedly, Philippine lawmakers want to amend Sections 2 and 3
of the Constitution’s Article XII so as to allow foreign individuals and corporations to
acquire, own and exploit private or public Philippine lands, and to fully own and control
businesses in the country including public utilities.

It is a pity that the current discourse on cha-cha have focused more on the
constituent assembly (Con Ass) mode and what many people think as the hidden
agenda behind it: term extension of elective officials or a shift to a parliamentary
system which will allow the sitting president whose term expires in 2010 to run as
congresswoman or member of parliament in the scheduled 2010 election and thereby
give her a chance to maintain power – perhaps forever – as prime minister of a
predictably rubber-stamp Philippine parliament. Nevertheless, the president has vowed
to retire from politics once her term ends in 2010 thereby theoretically leaving just one
imminent yet seemingly unobserved peril.

Few people notice the fact that many supposedly anti-Con Ass politicians
(presidentiables, actually) support charter change through a constitutional convention
(Con Con). In the June 10 multi-sectoral rally against Cha-Cha through Con Ass, among
the politicians who were allowed to speak briefly, only Pampanga Governor “Among Ed”
Panlilio condemned the administration-backed economic amendments. Other politicians
trained their guns on the supposed attempt to institute a dictatorship through a
parliamentary shift. It is interesting to note that many of them proclaim the necessity of
charter change, albeit through a different mode, but they seem to deliberately avoid
explaining what constitutional amendments they advocate. Their silence is deafening as
regards the necessity or absurdity of amending the patriotic economic provisions in the
1987 Constitution. It is thus safe to assume that these anti-Con Ass lawmakers are in
fact in favor of discarding provisions on national patrimony and Filipino primacy in the
economy. It’s just that they want it done through a supposedly apolitical Con Con.

If Rizal were alive today, he could help people easily deduce that the grand
battle of our times is not about the means of cha-cha, term extension or a
parliamentary shift but the imminent triumph of previously shelved out parity rights for
foreigners – the most terrible anathema to Philippine progress and survival.

Simoun’s counsel: Nation-building as an antidote to colonialism

In El Filibusterismo’s seventh chapter (Charles Derbyshire’s translation), the

incognito anarchist rebel Simoun counsels Basilio to take advantage of the Spaniards’
refusal to assimilate Filipinos as full citizens of Spain: “Are they unwilling that you be
assimilated with the Spanish people? Good enough! Distinguish yourselves then by
revealing yourselves in your own character, try to lay the foundations of the Philippine
fatherland! Do they deny you hope? Good! Don’t depend on them, depend upon
yourselves and work!” In these times, Simoun’s advice should enlighten Philippine
lawmakers who keep on yakking that our national survival solely depends on the
investments of USA, China and other foreign powers.

Rizal through Simoun implores Filipinos to think and act independently of

colonizers as they seem not to care about the Philippines. Why bother to beg for their
humane treatment if you can build a nation where you will be supreme? Why ask for
foreign help when you can build on your own – a prosperous country, an economic
giant – out of a resource-rich archipelago? When Rizal founded La Liga Filipina (League
of Filipinos), he’s trying to achieve just that as can be inferred in La Liga’s aims
enshrined in its constitution written by the “First Filipino” himself: 1) to unite the whole
archipelago into one compact and homogeneous body; 2) mutual protection in every
want and necessity (through a cooperative); 3) defense against violence and injustice;
4) encouragement of education, agriculture and commerce; 5) study and application
and reforms (Retana in Monleon: 1968). If Rizal were alive today, he will certainly urge
people to unite as a nation and achieve progress with minimal or even non-existing
foreign support. The fact that Rizal founded an organization aimed at uniting “the whole
archipelago into one compact and homogeneous body” is a proof that the national hero
believes that Filipinos can achieve progress even without begging for foreign
investment. Why ask for more foreign investment when the Filipino people can always
invest for their own country?

Of course, Rizal’s dream is grounded on reality. Time and again, forward-looking

civil society groups have proposed debt renegotiation as a way to raise funds for our
country’s development. Just in the past 10 years, the Philippines paid a whopping
5,572,327,000,000 pesos to domestic and foreign financial entities (based on data from
the Freedom from Debt Coalition/FDC, Bulatlat Media Group and Department of Budget
and Management), without drastically reducing the country’s unsettled debts since
every year, so-called development projects are implemented through fresh debts. Such
amount is more than enough to establish at least a gold mine, a noodle factory, a steel
mill, a petroleum refinery and a huge rice plantation, businesses which if honestly run
by the government will produce enough profits in ten years time to settle our financial
obligations and bankroll vital social services such as health, housing and education.

Rizal’s prescription: Progress through independence, hard work and self-

reliance

In the essay Filipinas Dentro de Cien Años (The Philippines A Century Hence;
translated by Austin Craig) – which nearly sealed his status as an heir to Nostradamus –
Rizal predicted USA’s annexation of the Philippines. Trusting that the Filipino people will
be able to achieve independence from Spain through sweat, blood and tears, he hopes
that Filipinos “will defend with inexpressible valor the liberty secured at a price of so
much blood and sacrifice” against the new colonizers. Instead of native leaders begging
for statehood or parity rights for Americans (and now, for all foreigners), Rizal
envisioned Filipino “men that will spring from their soil...,” people who “...will strive to
enter freely upon the wide road of progress...” and “labor together to strengthen their
fatherland...” The national hero emphasized that to be truly independent, citizens must
work hard to achieve not only political but also economic liberty, the very foundation of
any genuine liberty.

Rizal exhorts Filipinos to use their struggle against recolonization coupled with
self-reliant economic endeavors as a way to achieve progress for the infant nation:
“Then the mines will be made to give their gold for relieving distress, iron for weapons,
copper, lead and coal. Perhaps the country will revive the maritime and mercantile life
for which the islanders are fitted by nature, ability and instincts...” It is most
unfortunate that those tasked to offer flowers to Rizal’s tomb annually are Filipinos who
go against Rizal’s counsel on nation-building, leaders who can only lead the people to
further foreign economic subjugation, leaders who never tried to attain genuine
progress through hard work and self-reliance, leaders who always beg for foreign
crumbs, leaders who beg foreigners to exploit Philippine natural resources all the more.
For example, our top economic managers today see no problem in awarding a billion-
dollar gold mining project to ZTE Corporation, an enterprise wholly-owned by Chinese
financers.

Rizal’s advice to rely on the Filipinos’ own strengths and abilities has been
shunned. The people’s supposed “representatives” have started the first move to
authorize the total surrender of the country’s national patrimony, natural resources and
national economy to foreign corporations. They idiotically assert that foreign
investments are really beneficial to Filipinos when in fact, researches – such as what
American William Pomeroy has published in a book – state that for every dollar that
foreign corporations invest in the Philippines, they earn a net profit of $3.68, $2 of
which is repatriated to their home countries. And that was in the 1970s. It is assumed
that with the more efficient mass production schemes coupled with perennially low
wages in these times, repatriated foreign profits from the Philippines should have grown
exponentially.
Smashing the myth of economic protectionism

Cha-cha proponents like administration Senator Edgardo Angara claims that we

should “open up our economy” and do away with our alleged status as the “only
country with a closed economy” in Asia. Deconstructing Senator Angara’s
bureaucratese, they desire parity rights for foreign corporations through the reversal of
the Constitution’s various provisions on economic protectionism – measures which
nominally insulate Philippine industries from being gobbled out or slaughtered by huge
foreign corporations. They allege that the country is suffering because of too much
economic protectionism, but reality suggests otherwise.

To paraphrase an American politician, economic protectionism can’t be called a

failure in the Philippines because it is yet to be tried. In Rizal’s Sobre La Indolencia de
los Filipinos (The Indolence of Filipinos; translation published by the National Historical
Institute), his indictment of a Spanish-led colonial government that treats every
productive endeavor of Filipinos with nonchalance still applies to recent Philippine
administrations: “There is no encouragement at all either for the manufacturer or the
farmer; the government gives no aid either when the harvest, is poor, when the locusts
lay waste in the field, or when a typhoon destroys in its path the wealth of the land; nor
does it bother to seek a market for the products of its colonies.” Yearly, more and more
Filipino enterprises are forced to shut down due to stiff competition with heavily-funded
and/or -subsidized foreign corporations. Tariff rates and quota restrictions on the
importation of various foreign products with Filipino counterparts (such as textile,
cement, wheat etc.) are close to zero, if not virtually zilch. Thus, Rizal’s complaint
regarding the lack of encouragement for local manufacturers still holds water in our
globalization-obsessed era.

As regards agriculture, the proven backbone of every self-reliant and resilient

economy, one is tempted to say “kailangan pa bang i-memorize ‘yan” (isn’t very
obvious?). Everyone knows that recent administrations have failed to boost Philippine
agriculture. On the contrary, through the combined effects of a failed land reform
program, zero tariff on agricultural products and filching of funds for the agriculture
sector, recent regimes have only succeeded in making farming a non-viable enterprise,
as evident with the number of informal dwellers in Metro Manila and other highly-
urbanized cities who admit abandoning their unproductive plantations in the provinces.

Expounding on the virtually non-existent protection of manufacturers and other

Filipino industrial entities, Rizal says thus: “The great difficulty that every enterprise
encountered with the Administration also contributed not a little to kill off every
commercial or industrial movement. All the Filipinos and all those in the Philippines who
have wished to engage in business know how many documents, how many comings
and goings, how many stamped papers, and how much patience are necessary to
secure from government permit for an enterprise.” Such shabby treatment of local
entrepreneurs which still exists today has stunted the growth and development of
strong Filipino industries. How can Filipino business burdened with red tape and
extortion attempts compete with foreign corporations who are favored by the
government through the grant of special privileges such as tax holidays? Where
Malaysia has Proton Car and India its Tata Car, the Philippines has only imported
brands to offer (even our jeepney industry is slowly dying). Where China can produce
cheap yet durable laptops, we can only offer microchips. Where the USA has Hersheys’
we only have a struggling sugar and cocoa industry.

Instead of trumpeting the supposed failure of economic protectionism, politicians

must acknowledge that, at the very least, we are yet to try it. Why are they hell-bent
on discarding something that we haven’t even attempted to achieve? Let us first try
applying economic protectionism as America did in its days as a fledgling republic
before engaging in the so-called free trade.

The way forward: A genuinely independent nation

In El Filibusterismo’s Chapter 24, Rizal through the idealistic young student

leader Isagani voiced out what he wants the Philippines to become: a nation where
“...commerce, industry, agriculture, the sciences, will develop under the mantle of
liberty, with wise and just laws...” Simoun uttered Rizal’s prescription for the Philippines
to achieve liberty and its accompanying benefits by exposing what Filipinos should not
do and/or be, in Chapter 7 of El Fili: “You ask for equal rights, the Hispanization of your
customs, and you don’t see that what you are begging for is suicide, the destruction of
your nationality, the annihilation of your fatherland, the consecration of tyranny! What
will you be in the future? A people without character, a nation without liberty—
everything you have will be borrowed, even your very defects! You beg for
Hispanization, and do not pale with shame when they deny it you!...” Recent readers
need only to substitute “Americanization” etc. for “Hispanization” and Simoun’s words
will be more chilling. In the same chapter, Simoun emphasizes the task of nation-
building as a way to progress: “instead of aspiring to be a province, aspire to be a
nation! Instead of subordinate thoughts, think independently, to the end that neither by
right, nor custom, nor language, the Spaniard can be considered the master here, nor
even be looked upon as a part of the country, but ever as an invader, a foreigner...”
Again, substitute “American” or “Chinese” for “Spaniard” and this quote will be clearer.

If Rizal were alive today, no doubt, he will be at the forefront of the broad
coalition against charter change (be it through Con Ass or Con Con) especially if it
concerns the discarding of patriotic economic provisions in the still young Constitution.
Instead of begging for more foreign investments and opening-up the country’s economy
the way a destitute prostitute unwillingly give in to his/her client, Rizal will restart the
Filipino people’s unfinished nation-building endeavor as a good farmer patiently tills his
land in the hope of having a bountiful harvest. Till the Rizals of our times are born, we
can only hope and pray that our leaders will be able to realize that the charter change
they want is a throwback to worse times, something which deserves to be shelved out.
But, as a Salvadoran priest remarked in the film Voces Inocentes, we ought to be
reminded that “Today, brothers, it is not enough to pray.”

(http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/views-and-analysis/06/22/09/jose-rizals-hidden-discourse-against-charter-change )

(http://newsbreak.com.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6328&Itemid=88889094 )