Towards meritocracy

SIMPLE observation of social realities sometimes puts a spotlight on our deeply rooted culture. We may not give too much importance to those social realities; but in fact they reveal the need for some fundamental change in our outlook and traditional ways of doing things.

There is one social reality that we experience in our day-to-day life. Dr. Dumol brings up the phenomenon of multiple godparents at baptisms and multiple sponsors at weddings. He then points to our culture inherited from pre-Spanish colonial times, when there was no Philippines, and we were simply a set of mainly autonomous barangays, scattered all throughout our islands. Within that cultural paradigm, being well-connected and falling under the patronage of someone very important was what mattered; individual ability may not have counted for much. This is what Dr. Dumol says: “The multiple baptismal godparents and multiple wedding sponsors are symptoms. When they disappear, Philippine culture will have changed into a culture where people are valued for their own merits and not because of whom they know.”

“Surviving because of whom you know is the ancient culture of our ancestors. The society they lived in was simple. It had two tiers: those who were served and those who served. Those who served were known as alipin or timawa; those who were served were datus or maginoo. Today, if someone were to ask you, “Kaninong bata ka?,” you would know exactly what the question meant. The question comes from the ancient culture, which survives lustily in many places in the country.”

“The ancient culture has got to go. It belongs to a pre-modern culture, one in which human dignity was not yet appreciated, had not yet, in fact, been discovered. Today we wish to develop another culture, one in which people can stand on their own feet and need not rely on patrons or sponsors or godparents for advancement.”

Being able to stand on one’s own ability, and having to move up the ladder mainly on one’s own merits is the transformative shift that Dr. Dumol calls for. He echoes the sentiments of many — that “the padrino system” that we hang on to has its many advantages. However, all too often it stands in the way of professionalism, the demands of a career service, and much-needed greater preference for meritocracy. It opens the doorway towards less selfreliance, and more dependence upon connections and other extraneous influences (e.g., political power and dynastic control). All too often that doorway leads to corruption and smallgroup mentality that pits “us against them” (e.g., belonging to the same fraternity or the same graduating class from a given college or university, etc.). It relegates the common, wider interest too far into the background (if it is not forgotten altogether).

We need an open discussion on this cultural trait of the “padrino” system. We should recognize that it is deeply embedded in us; but we must also accept the demand of a more open, democratic, egalitarian society that we wish to become. That demand imposes greater self-reliance, personal dignity, and advancement in an organization or in any group or enterprise mainly on the basis of one’s personal merits and demonstrated abilities.

In what concrete and specific ways must we change in order to speed up the transformation of our society?