Great article from Ronald Camit that I found on the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
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I HAVE TOTALLY LOST HOPE IN THE PHILIPPINES—OR AT least, in the next six years. I have seen people filing their certificates of candidacy, checked their backgrounds, examined their preliminary platforms, watched their commercials, and sadly not one of them is qualified to be our next president, as far as I am concerned.
I was in the MRT one Saturday morning on my way to class, when I overheard two rich teenagers talking in amazement about their latest gadgets: a Vaio laptop, cell phone, Blackberry, a golden wristwatch. They described themselves as techies, to me, they were not. They were simply rich citizens of a forever backward country—just like me.
The Philippines is a technologically-backward country. We do not have a strong national drive toward innovation, and nobody seems to be aware of it. No one among the presidential aspirants has spent some time analyzing the current status of the country’s technological competitiveness, which for me is a key to development.
When I heard those teenagers in the MRT, I tried to imagine how many billions of dollars we spend to acquire foreign technologies and to pay royalties for intellectually-protected products. I thought that if the Philippines had come up with world-class, high-tech products decades ago, we could be earning as much as industrialized countries.
I have learned that South Korea established its ship-building industry in the late 1960s, and became No. 1 in the world in just 10 years. The same thing happened with Taiwan’s Acer as well as India’s pharmaceutical and wind energy industries, to mention a few. But the Philippines has nothing to be proud of in terms of world-class, high-technology products, no thanks to the lack of interest and funds for innovation and research and development.
Since I started my graduate course last year, I became extra critical of the different platforms being presented by candidates in the 2010 elections. I haven’t seen any plans to improve the country’s science and technology, or even the education sector. All the presidential candidates are offering platforms already presented decades ago, which clearly shows that we have gotten nowhere. Filipinos dreamed of an industrialized country decades ago, but that remains a dream until now—clear proof that Filipinos dream last.
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Read the full article
here.
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