MANILA, Philippines -- The Philippines is “a piece of Latin America that drifted across the Pacific 500 years ago. It is still distant from the rest of Asia in mind-set. Its President usurped power in 2001 with the backing of street riots, claiming that the legitimately elected president had resigned his office because he had left the Palace overnight in fear of the rioters.”

Thus wrote a columnist in a piece titled “Welcome to the fantasy world of ASEAN’s members” in Hong Kong’s major English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post (SCMP). He was highlighting the irony of the recent signing by ASEAN members of their charter which upholds democracy and human rights even as they continued to ignore the proverbial “elephant” in their midst, Burma (Myanmar).

Indeed the Philippines, with its traditionally corrupt politics, festering economic problems and impoverished happy-go-lucky people, has long been perceived as one of Asia’s more bizarre nations. The banana republic analogy was reinforced once again by the recent muddle-headed coup attempt by disgruntled military elements and by the perennial exodus of migrant workers.

Besides the continuing export of migrant workers which produces those precious remittances, tourism is another of the country’s hoped-for revenue generator. Unfortunately foreign travelers apparently consider Thailand and Indonesia, even communist Vietnam, more desirable holiday destinations than the Philippines.

Our tourism industry’s poor showing was brought up when I recently became the target of criticism after sending the SCMP a letter in which I described the treatment of foreign domestics in the territory as slavery. One Hong Kong woman, incensed at my slavery charge, stated that Indonesian women are now more popular than Filipinas among local employers. She went further off on a tangent and said that not many folks choose the Philippines for their vacations, even preferring Bali despite its having experienced a terrorist bombing.

I had joined the polemic by rebutting a letter which made the outrageous claim that Hong Kong employers need to be defended from their Filipina maids. The writer cited the case of a local pop star who had hired and fired 21 Pinays over the past three years (one of whom was jailed after he took her to court for having purloined some of his photographs). She urged the government to pass a law protecting local employers both from dishonest and incompetent foreign maids, adding that the pop star was entitled to fire any number of Pinays if their work was sloppy.

This was plainly absurd, in the context of the history of maltreatment which too many domestics face in the territory, since they’re usually the ones needing protection from abusive employers. The fact that the Hong Kong government refuses to pass an anti-discrimination law shows that domestics are viewed as undeserving menials. Furthermore, they’re banned from acquiring residency, no matter how long they have lived here. All other foreigners not engaged in domestic work automatically acquire residency after a seven years’ stay.

In my letter I had used the term “slavery,” particularly since various reports show that human trafficking syndicates have been using Hong Kong as a transit point, sometimes even as a base. Another Hong Kong woman attacked my slavery charge by claiming that maids get a better deal here than they do in Malaysia and Singapore, where wages are lower and weekly days off are seldom granted. Filipinas shouldn’t think they’re so great, she stated, just because they speak English, adding that they should go home if they’re unhappy about local working conditions.

Still another correspondent jeered, “Escoda’s sour-graping (sic) will not help improve the standing of Filipino maids in Hong Kong .... Indonesians have out-competed Filipinos in all sectors, not just in the maids market, commanding respect from consumers in both the developed and developing countries. Where are the Filipino products?”

Despite the non sequitur, she may have scored a point since surveys show that Indonesian domestics (who are required to learn Cantonese before they are shipped to Hong Kong) are predicted to outnumber Pinays in a year or two. In fact, local government clinics these days display information leaflets starting first with Bahasa, followed by Tagalog and then Thai.

As for the letter-writer’s point about the absence of our exports, indeed one doesn’t find quality Philippine-made products like textiles, appliances, foodstuff, household goods in the various commodities from the other Southeast Asian countries.

All this confirms what a few perspicacious commentators in Manila have decried: that genuine industrialization has eluded the Philippines, thanks to the wrong-headed policies of past and present, inept and corrupt administrations. And so we have fallen back to being a mere service economy, with our major export being warm bodies, particularly female ones.

A British friend once asked me why such a “sweet” people as the Filipinos seem always to have such rotten governments. With the country adrift and viewed as an Asian Latin America, perhaps the banana republic label will morph into a “mango republic” -- signifying the sweet, sometimes sour, fruit which sadly does tend to rot.

(Isabel T. Escoda is a longtime Hong Kong resident who has been writing about migrant workers in Asia.)