Sure we can

(I don’t know how much of this is still going on but I remember in college many seminarians wrote to beg for money from American benefactors. Some Filipino bishops and priests also went on regular trips to the US to beg for help with their unfinished churches and short-of-fund projects. Some bishops recently begged for luxury vehicles from the government. How effectively do these practices promote a mendicant culture?)

So why do we have to depend on military aid from the US and now China when we have excellent gun-makers that we outlaw instead of organize and professionalize? Why do we depend on US hand-me-downs for our Navy when, for one, the Balamban shipyard is building and exporting world class ships?

South Korea was a very poor nation when we helped her repel the North’s invasion in the fifties. But South Korea is now so industrialized that it is making and selling cars, heavy equipment and jet planes to us while we have remained essentially an agricultural country and not very productive at that.

What are OFW remittances but a veritable foreign aid? It is very right that we extol our overseas Filipino workers (OFW) as heroes but our government should be ashamed of its failure to create jobs locally forcing OFWs to beg for jobs abroad not without paying a high personal and social price (indignities, from foreign masters, broken marriages and delinquent children) in leaving their families behind.

Hence, although I do not quite agree with his language I nevertheless welcome President Duterte’s self-confidence and swagger in delivering the

message that we can survive without American aid. And for that matter without Japanese, Korean or Chinese aid.

In any case, we cannot be dependent on foreign aid forever and survive as a self-respecting nation. It’s time we acquire some selfrespect and, instead of begging, start thinking self-reliance and take pride in going for it.

— Orlando P. Carvajal