December 2008
A New Year’s Resolution for our Elders
December 24, 2008 by Niña Terol-Zialcita · Leave a Comment
AFTER the press conference that introduced the Movement for Good Governance (MGG) to media and other supporters, I heard from one of the MGG “elders” something that I rarely hear: an acknowledgement — a thinly veiled apology, actually — that the country is still deep in muck because his generation didn’t do a good enough job of “fixing things” here.
“In spite of the activism then, we still didn’t do enough for the Philippines,” he lamented. “Most of us gave up on the country and focused instead on making a living. That in itself is not wrong, but we just didn’t try hard enough.”
He wasn’t blaming government for the chronic ills that have paralyzed the country. He wasn’t blaming the youth for being apathetic. He wasn’t blaming globalization for pushing developed countries forward and leaving the rest of the world behind. He wasn’t mouthing off a litany of complaints. Instead, he was facing a reality that many in his generation still could not see: that the failures of this country are aggregated results of THEIR own failures.
