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Philipines South East Asia

Bec
2004-09-20 18:23:21

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granted, leaving only defence and foreign affairs in the hands of the US. Spanish was replaced by English as the language of the Aleuts and the Filipinos learned it diligently from the several hundred teachers sent to bring them the benefits of American civilisation. In fact, cultural alienation, already advanced, increased as English words joined the bevy of Spanish ones that had become part of the local languages. Today's national language, Pilipino, is a quarter English, a quarter Spanish and only half Tagalog, a Luzon idiom derived from the original Malay. I cannot avoid feeling sad about the loss of identity caused by this cultural degradation when I listen to Pilipino on TV or the radio.

The Philippines finally became independent in 1947 after four centuries of occupation by the Spaniards, the Americans and the Japanese who had badly ravaged the archipelago. It was finally the turn of local masters to exercise the privileges they had seen foreigners enjoy. And they did it with a vengeance culminating in the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda who bled the country dry to feed their innumerable bank accounts abroad. The levels of corruption reached during the Marcos regime are said to have subsided... a little. The Philippines' score on the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International was still only 3.6 in 1999 having moved up from 2.8 in 1995.

Workers have little hope of bettering their lot in the Philippines. Only 3.5% of them are unionised and most of the remainder have no direct relationship with their real employers for they contract with hiring agencies that rent them out to satisfy their client's fluctuating demand for labor. With that system, when workers are on the verge of organising a union, the contracting agency can close shop without loosing much for it holds no real capital investments. Then, the real employers who still need labour can rent it from another agency, or from the same people under another name. It's all quite legal and the ruling elite does not seem inclined to change the system.

I don't know how you feel about all this but I find it profoundly depressing. It makes me sick!

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