She’s done for

She’s done for. It’s in the air. Everybody can feel it.

All except the clique that rules with her.

We don’t know how much more time it will take, but it won’t be long now.

In the face of such an event, what are we who are ordinary citizens supposed to do?

The answer is very simple: we should have registered our disgust over the present administration in the first place, long ago. There is still time to do so, but now the situation demands much more of us than just a registration of disgust.

We have to make it clear that we are not only saying No to Gloria; we have to shout, in our loudest voices, that we are saying NEVER to CORRUPTION – not never again, but NEVER, period.

For Gloria and her family, both official and ministerial, merely epitomize the rank corruption in our midst. They demonstrate to us the depths to which we have gone as a nation. They are the prime symbols of the pay-offs, the buy-outs, the suhol, the “hingi, hingi” that transpire everyday in our midst.

We cannot advance further as a nation if we do not unseat them.

At the same time, we all know that Gloria is not the end of corruption. Already, as history has shown time and again, deals are most likely being made to replace her. And we know that those who will most likely replace her will be just as corrupt, if not worse.

However, the prospect should not stop us from pushing for Gloria’s ouster; it should in fact urge us to go one step further after her ouster.

We cannot tire of the process of regime change, just because the regime that confronts us is not the ideal we strive for. On the contrary, with every regime change we must learn with better sense how to expunge the corruption in our midst.

Our mistake so far has been to think that corruption lies in our politics alone.

But the corruption lies not in our politics so much as in our economics (for politics is merely the external structure built on economics):

Our politicians can be blatantly corrupt because they cultivate a slew of dependents around them. These dependents are so abject that they could not object to whatever the politician does in their name.

Remove the dependents, and the politicians will be forced to deal instead with ideas for the betterment of the nation.

We have already proceeded a little farther away from charity – giving our people fish – to teaching them how to fish. Let us move even farther off, removing relations of dependency altogether by teaching our people how to market the fish – not only live fish but pickled, dried, or salted in attractively-designed packages, by the hundreds of thousands.

In order to remove relations of dependency between politicians and our people altogether, we cannot have just a few of these marketers of fish, even if they were to grow to be the biggest entrepreneurs. We have to have at least a million of them for a start, in fact an increasing number through the years.

For the politicians certainly have more than a million under their thumbs.

We should therefore demand, right now, from those who are poised to take over the Arroyo administration, a veritable program that will encourage an entrepreneurial mass movement. Those of them that carry one are those who understand the true nature of our problems, and therefore deserve our encouragement and support.

This entrepreneurial mass movement should push for and encourage both family and community enterprises using raw materials that are already found in the Philippines. All agencies of the government can and should be mobilized towards this goal.

Legislation in aid of the entrepreneurial mass movement should be instituted, among the most necessary of which are:

• The establishment of computerized one-stop registration shops in all towns and cities without the hassle of “suhol”;
• The minimization of registration fees and bureaucracy not only for small and medium, but large-scale entrepreneurs, whether foreign or local;
• Five-year tax incentives for small and medium-scale entrepreneurs, provided they are Filipino citizens;
• The establishment of entrepreneurial high schools modeled after the community schools of the late forties and early fifties, with parents, teachers and barrio/town officials working in concert with students in establishing small enterprises;
• The establishment of entrepreneurial communities all over the Philippines.

We must warn politicians, whether they are in power or waiting in the sidelines, that an entrepreneurial movement HAS started among the ranks at least of the middle classes and overseas Filipinos, and may get to the ranks of the masses soon enough. If they do not heed the signs of the times, they may get run over by this movement without their knowing it. The best way to survive is to recognize it as the long-term solution to the problem of corruption and poverty, and to be active in its implementation.

Now that we have a long-term positive alternative to the Arroyo administration, make your next move, Trapo.

And you too, ordinary citizen. ACT NOW, before it's too late.