A BROADER PERSPECTIVE -- this is what we all need to have and keep in order to respond constructively to the present economic and political crises. We need a viewpoint that lifts all our hearts and minds well beyond divisive debates on individual personalities, specific acts, and sensational twists and turns.  Let us not allow the sensationalized details played up by the commercial media -- even if some of these really deserve our attention -- and let us not allow the oversupply of "Erap jokes" -- even if some of these are really witty -- to drown out from our collective awareness the larger national interests, the longer historical processes, and the common desire for peace and progress in our country. .Let us all keep our sense of focus and sense of proportion, and avert further divisiveness.
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...............We do have to address the despicable levels of graft and corruption in our society, but unless we are ready to believe that it all just started under the present administration, we should also be critical of the hypocrisy of those personalities who were part of full-blown graft and corruption machineries in the past but who now dare claim to be "holier-than-thou." And if we take illegal gambling in proper perspective, for example, we would not put it on equal terms with policies that have sacrificed the health, environment, income levels and other interests of our people just to appease foreign creditors and investors and international usurer agencies. It would take much effort to develop such sense of history. With too many of us absorbed in passionately debating some media-spotlighted controversy or other from week to week, even from day to day, who would remember any of those antecedents?
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...............With failing memory, it is not surprising that some of us fall into the very narrow notion that the entire problem is with the incumbent president and everything would be all right if only we could replace him with another politician real soon.  That kind of idea looked a bit brighter when it first held sway 14 years ago, when we were choosing between a tyrant of 20 years and a plain widow.  But history should have taught us soon afterwards that removing a tyrant without removing much else in the system retains tyranny; that cheering even a non-politician figure without seeing all the traditional politicians around her retains the graft-ridden political realities; and  playing blind to the dominant foreign-investor influence on our economy is tantamount to  blaming this or that group of rats for rice disappearing from our storehouses by truckloads.
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...............To blame President Estrada alone for high gasoline prices, for example, is to forget which administration was behind the energy deregulation law and the privatization of Petron!  To blame him for the shrinking value of the peso is to forget which administration decided to honor all the illegal debts of the dictatorship we had then just deposed, and that such policy has been a single most consequential factor in our worsening economic crises since then.  Estrada's governing style and personal lifestyle really leave so much to be desired, and some acts have crossed the bounds of the legal (like banning Inquirer reporters from legitimate coverage) but his more significant offense against the people's interests has been his very continuance of his predecessors' consistent obedience to foreign-investor and foreign-creditor dictates for honoring all those illegal debts, "leveling the playing field," privatizing basic public services while raising taxes, etc., and all the while claiming to be "pro-poor."
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..............To engage in partisan polarization led by opposition and administration politicians makes it all the worse because this drives deep wedges among the citizenry, even in neighborhoods and families, with myopic views clashing with other myopic views and achieving nothing but worse social disunity.  Let not the politicians be cheered and applauded as they grandstand "on company time," that is, when they should all be working together everyday for the upliftment of the sovereign politic; more importantly, let us not allow ourselves to join the fray and engage in proxy-quarrels for them in our offices, shops and homes, as if we really had anything to gain by siding with any of them.
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...............Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the country. How to do that?  We propose some ways:
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...............1. Adopt a broader view of things. Consider things in proper perspective, take the long view.  Remind everyone that there has been a decades-long historical antecedent to the present economic crisis, and the solutions are not as instant as a "snap election" or having another politician succeed the incumbent one. Tinkering with the Constitution just to effect such "quick fix" is not worth the constitutional instability it would cause, because it can't possibly solve the problem in real terms. Many of the problems are systemic and have their roots in previous administrations across decades and in the century-old effective dominance by an economic superpower that has been more eager to help a world-war foe than a world-war ally. Also in our own level of consciousness and patterns of political behavior as citizens. Let's start to personally live daily and fully the ethics we want all the other people to adopt; it will really take some time, but no solution to our social problems can ever work without that!
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...............2. Effectively influence all those debates on the crisis in order to raise them to the level of intelligent discourse, refraining from rabid partisanship, and engaging instead in "sanib-sinag" or light-sharing" conversations. This is the ethic of earnest human conversations for all to be speaking with honest humility and listening with genuine respect, enjoying the common---alities and being mutually enriched by the diversities. While it is positive that we have the opportunity to process our response to the crisis collectively and publicly, it cannot remain positive if this processing is done at the level of impassioned debates and rantings.
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...............3. Help build a consensus that our country urgently needs the combined efforts of all patriotic Filipinos to reassert the collective nobility of our nation, based on our heritage.  An enlightened and morally-upright citizenry would choose only deserving candidates for public office.  The masses have achieved the historical feat of having their collective will decisively prevail in a presidential election, something long overdue in a democracy. They can now be helped to make a much better judgment as to who should be their next candidate, and make the latter prevail without the guns, goons and gold of traditional politicians.
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...............4. Work to highlight the traditional Filipino value of "damayan" which is very much alive during crises and calamities.  Our present economic woes will surely worsen because we cannot expect any Philippine administration in the near future to defy foreign-investor dictation and shift priority to the people's actual interests. And it can only worsen faster in a period of political instability. Unless we strengthen whatever strands of unity have remained so far among our people, the economic crisis will push more and more of us to destitution, to desperation, to anti-social acts that victimize mainly those who are also destitute and desperate. That would cut deep wounds of division in our collective psyche which would be very difficult to heal.  Now, if we abet more rabid partisanship among our people against this and for that politician, we are in effect railroading our people to that scenario of chaos, with food riots, lootings, arson, killings left and right.
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...............We are not asking the opposition to abandon its work; neither are we asking the Estrada administration to stop trying to defend itself and asserting its mandate. But we are calling upon the people to demand, and to actually show the way, for a much better handling of the crises. (SanibLakas Foundation is asking all individuals and groups who find merit in this statement to help us reach more and more people with its analyses and calls. We have faith in such synergy.)
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...............Tayo'y magtulungan, huwag magsiraan, huwag magbangayan!  Magsanib-sanib tayo ng lakas. Let's build the national synergy on a positive tone and really pull one another up through positive, unifying means. Anger poisons our rationality and sense of proportion, divides us and destroys our sense of community and nationhood.  Let's have more statesmanship here. Let's have more maturity, honesty, love and concern which all heal and strengthen. Let us build the unifying strength to hurdle the obstacles to peace and prosperity in our country and in the world. We owe it to ourselves as a nation.  And we owe it to all our babies yet unborn.

Makati City, Philippines  October 22, 2000

For the SanibLakas Board of Trustees,
(Sgd.) Ed Aurelio C. Reyes
Founder and President
SanibLakas ng Taongbayan Foundation
6173-C Gabaldon st., Makati,
1210 Philippines