We have become a cowed people. Everybody seems to be afraid to challenge the present set-up because of a deep insecurity to anything new. I don't really blame them. We have been lured into so many promising traps before and we have become afraid. The people who are taking advantage of us know this very well. They play upon our insecurities. They want to keep things the way they are. But for all their vaunted experience and education, where do we find ourselves in?

We need to study history. Only through studying the past will we avoid making the same mistakes again and again. To rebuild our country will require many sacrifices from all of us. But this will be one great opportunity to make our so-called overpopulation of 85 million work for us in a grand way if we rebuild our country together and we start sharing common goals to help the neediest and the weakest. We are far from hopeless. No use asking why all our other Asian neighbors appear to have left us behind because 85 million united pairs of hands will make short shrift of the daunting problems that lie ahead.

Whenever that moment comes is when we will finally become a nation.

“A country can have growth without development and that is exactly what is happening in the Philippines,” said Bishop Antonio Tobias.

Tobias noted that much of the so-called development was due to “more beer, cigarettes, casinos, lotto, ‘jueteng,’ drugs, smuggling, golf clubs, high-rise condos, real estate, tourist resorts, memorial parks and columbaria, logging and extracting more minerals -- depleting our natural resources at a rate faster than nature can regenerate.”

What I can't understand is everyone seems to have a clear idea of the many problems that plague the Philippines and you will never find yourself at a loss for solutions because so many are floating around but the entire population appears to be in a trance, mumbling that no alternative to the current dispensation exists anyway and let's all just keep the status quo....

A ceasefire was declared by Israel only when children got killed in Lebanon. We have become so accustomed to children dying in the Philippines that we continue to go about our own, separate and merry ways.

I will admit that one of the attractions of living in the Philippines is the presence of many "helpers", a euphemism for cooks, washerwomen, maids, drivers and nannies. In a feudal society, this arrangement works because in a majority of cases these employees together with their dependents are cared for from cradle to grave. They are provided with food and shelter and clothing and their children are educated so that typically within a generation these dependents become self-sufficient.

There will always be instances of abuse however. Some helpers fall prey to sexual predators, others are roughed-up for minor infractions while some are subjected to a constant stream of verbal abuse. There are also cases of low pay or no pay at all and some cruel employers withhold salaries to prevent disgruntled employees from leaving the household.

As I stated earlier, this system is supposed to work especially in a country with severe underemployment problems. People assisting other people into becoming even more productive will translate into net productive gains for the country. However we must always be conscious of potential abuse to these less-fortunate.

The conflict in the Middle East that forced more than 30,000 Filipinos to leave Lebanon exposed yet another limitation regarding our government's seeming lack of concern with the overseas Filipino workers. There exists an agency appropriately named the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration that is responsible for maintaining a fund built with contributions from the same overseas workers to the tune of 7.6-billion pesos. When the critical need to use this fund arose, all the government could do was disburse 150 million pesos, a pittance considering the large number of people who needed to be evacuated quickly.

This only stresses the point that overseas workers need to be represented in our government. The untold millions of Filipinos struggling abroad to keep the Philippine economy afloat do not have a single representative in our legislature that has provisions for "minority" representation. This needs to change soon as well.

MASSIVE graft has cost the government a total P1.2 trillion (US$48 billion) in the last five years, according to Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez.

Describing the huge toll that corruption wreaks on the country’s coffers, the Ombudsman said, “Can you imagine how many infrastructure projects could have been pursued? How many jobs could have been generated? How much equipment used in peace and order could have been bought, had this amount been used instead to improve our collective lives?”

Try asking how many children die each day as a direct result of this pernicious problem. Filipinos need to see that it is not just a matter of tolerating bad roads and terrible traffic and seeing more cops in the streets. People, particularly the weak and the most helpless are dying. The alarms need to be turned on full blast and we all need to awaken post haste because I don't think we can expect any assistance from anybody. One point is clear: dramatic change is necessary, the present path will lead us only deeper into trouble.