Why Philippines is still among the 3rd World Countries

In the past decades, the Philippines had seen many different leaders. They have all pledged to the people one thing, to uplift everyone’s life and take the country out of the hole of poverty. Empty promises, 100% promise, but that’s what all there is, promises. Their sons, daughters, nephews, nieces and grandchildren succeeded them as leaders, and their promise? To continue their ancestors legacy, well, let us put it this way, the old ones have done little or nothing at all, so what legacy are there for them to continue? The legacy of empty promises, whew! Their families just continue to become rich; they acquire more and more properties in their hometowns. Most hometowns ended up being named after their families, people say it is a gratitude to a former great leader, well for me, it is because these families end up owning half of the whole hometowns, tsk, tsk, tsk.
It is a sad fact, that here in the Philippines like in most part of the world, the gap between the rich families and the poor and middle classes continue to widen. Well, they say that it is because the lower classes exert a little effort to uplift their lives. Believe me, they exerted everything within their arsenal, only, they have nothing to compliment that effort. They don’t have the financial power. In this country where money is a driving force, all wit is nothing, it will only go down the drain.
Let us not blame everything to our ‘leaders’; we the people have a share in this problem. We tend to listen to leaders making promises; we tend to keep our hopes high that these leaders will fulfill their promises, well in fact, it shouldn’t be that way. We should also struggle more; we need to work to prove that we really deserve more. People, us, should have learned that a long time ago. Sharpen our skills, mind and body, in that way we can be more competitive, if we do that, we will feel that the workforce really has a need for us, we will never be a pushover type of race. In the not so distant past, Filipinos were the best English speaking Asian country; no other Asian country can contend that, not openly perhaps. But what they did, is that they invest in themselves, they invest in their people, and they invest more in Science and Engineering not in Law. Up to now, we are the better English speaking Malay race, but when it comes to real talent, they surpass us miles and miles away! India to this day has the best Information Technology workforce, although they struggle like us before, they can now cope up with the richer world. During the 1997 Asian crisis, every Asian country was hit, and it was almost impossible to recover. In the Philippines, every Filipino was worried; we were all worried that this financial turmoil will only make the lives of the poor more miserable. Closures of companies were expected, sooner. Negative energy hovers over the whole country. This was not true in our neighboring countries, although they too were not prepared for such crisis, they calmly device some master plans to offset its huge impact. Take Thailand for example, before the crisis, our currency has a higher value than the Thai Baht, yet, in an unexplainable circumstance, they took this crisis as a challenge, they managed to maintain the value of their money, in the end, their money has a higher value than ours today. The Koreans (South Korea), when people learned that their government was in the brink of bankruptcy donated some of their family gold to their government for a fresh start. That is why they continue to reap the benefits; their economy is still in the upswing.
The Filipinos can endure any hardships; we have proven it and still showing that we can. It’s a good attitude, but it doesn’t mean that we always have to endure. We can make a difference in our lives if we can only put our acts together. We don’t have to rely heavily on our government. “The government is most corrupt when there are too many laws – J.P. Rizal”, our country has still a chance, that is if we, the people, can act as one now. Stop cursing, the government, stop cursing one another, if the government can not give a concrete way to prosperity that people can follow, then let the people set that way so the government can follow. Stop those street rallies, stop complaining to what this government has to offer, we will always be in the losing end plus anger without them hearing us, that’s double lose for each and everyone of us. Let’s endure the situation a little more, if we really are enduring people, we shall be more productive if we are working. We are good workers, so let us prove it and sooner we will reap that fruit of our labor, if not during our lifetime, at least we can assure our children of a prosperous country.