Should P-Noy keep at it, he may yet become the Great Communicator in these parts the way Ronald Reagan was in the United States in the 1980s. With the difference that Reagan didn’t write his speeches – Peggy Noonan did, which also shows the worth of a brilliant speechwriter for a brilliant speaker – P-Noy does. That is one humongous edge the latter has.
Don’t look now, but P-Noy’s “utak-wangwang” is steadily creeping into the popular idiom, or public discourse, a short-hand for a kind of mentality given to abuse. Certainly easier to say “utak-wangwang” than “exceptionalism,” a word that has gained much currency in the US, particularly when prefaced by the modifier “American.”
As epithets go, it’s not unlike “Aksyong Aksaya,” which also became popular in Marcos’ heyday. Asyong Aksaya was a character invented by Larry Alcala, which came to represent profligacy or wastefulness, a thing the regime then officially campaigned against. It became so popular that people automatically said when they saw other people not switching off the air-conditioning when not needed or hosing their lawns indiscriminately, “Masyado ka namang Asyong Aksaya.” One can only hope P-Noy’s utak-wangwang takes on the same currency or popularity, enough for people to say when they encounter petty bureaucrats making life hell for them, or not-so-petty officials demanding tongpats for contracts, “Masyado ka namang utak-wangwang.”
I am glad as well that P-Noy is doing the rounds of the talking circuit, reiterating his campaign against utak-wangwang and emphasizing his resolve to transform the values of this country. Which includes as well stamping out crab mentality, or utak-talangka, the tendency of Filipinos to pull each other down the way small crabs pull back down their fellows who are near to climbing out of the basket. True enough, you don’t initiate a cultural revolution of sorts, you can’t bring this country anywhere. You don’t unleash a value transformation, you won’t stop corruption.
I am glad P-Noy has this thrust. But the question remains: How? How do you work this value transformation? How do you mount this cultural revolution?
I can imagine a number of vital things that are needed here. But one is primary. One is non-negotiable.
That is example.
We did not lack for efforts along these lines during Marcos’ time and Arroyo’s time. Well before Asyong Aksaya, the martial law regime had lines like “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan” uttered repeatedly on TV and radio and printed in newspapers and posters on walls. It had anthems like “May Bagong Silang” to whip up patriotic fervor and sing paeans to the New Dawn. Alongside the execution by firing squad of a convicted Chinese drug trafficker, these exhortations were not without power and gave people pause to think that maybe a new day had truly come. Maybe a new way was truly in the offing.
All that proved to be just a lot of hype. Not long afterward, government proved to be the most undisciplined of the lot, being very disciplined only in producing referendums that claimed near-universal support for itself. Just as well, not long after Asyong Aksaya, government proved to be the most profligate and wasteful of the lot, cronyism in particular, which was the very palpable form corruption took, being the most profligate and wasteful dissipation of the nation’s wealth.
Arroyo herself put on airs of being the Filipino’s adviser, if not confidante, with the epithet she tried to be known by, which was “Ate Glo.” It never took off, it was more the satiric “Ate Glow” that did. She went on to talk about herself as just a teacher – she had been one before she became president, she said, and would go back to being one after her term (which she hasn’t done – and reinforced the idea by actually going to classrooms and talking to the kids. Ate Glo exhorting the kids to strive for excellence, to aspire for greater things, to follow in her footsteps.
All very nice, except for one thing: How could Ate Glow possibly inspire honest ambition? How could Ate Glow possibly inspire the kids to ask, “What does it profit you to gain the whole world but lose your soul?” How could Ate Glow possibly inspire the kids, well, glow?
Exhortation is only as good as the example you set. “Action speaks louder than words” is one truism that happens to be true.
Mao Zedong and Lee Kuan Yew are two Asians who transformed their countries in soul as well as in body in record time. Pre-1949 China was the absolute pits and pre-1959 Singapore wasn’t that much better. Yet both countries are two of the most prosperous and disciplined countries today. Mao of course owns the more spectacular achievement, having wrought that change on an almost hopeless country of more than one billion people while Lee did it only to a city-state with a population of just over a third of Metro Manila. Whatever you say about Mao and Lee, and they truly had their excesses (a gross understatement about the Cultural Revolution), they were not crooks. They were not pillagers. They were not predators of their own people.
P-Noy has an opportunity to be that, however he refuses to cut a heroic figure, however he likes to do things on a smaller scale. But which also serves as a reminder that he has to avoid at all cost blunders like buying a Porsche, even if second-hand, even if with his own money. That is a lesson to be learned. He is the leader people look up to, he is the paragon people want to emulate, he is the antithesis of the utak bantay-salakay, the utak-talangka, the utak-wangwang.
He has for the most part lived up to the part. That is the sine qua non of changing a country. That is the key to transforming a people.
No example, no reformation. No example, no transformation.