In anger and frustration, many Filipinos—among them columnists and radio commentators—have been referring to our country as a “failed state.”

To these opinion-makers the No. 1 reason that makes the Republic of the Philippines a failed state is the fraudulence of our election results. So tainted with cheating are our elections that many Filipinos see many office holders as usurpers. Their thinking about the President’s illegitimacy is based on the “Hello Garci” scandal (over which Mrs. Gloria M. Arroyo apologized), the revelations of fraud throughout the country and the incredible official tallies and canvassing reports showing the late Fernando Poe Jr. to have received zero votes in precincts in such places as Maguindanao and Cebu, and the suspiciously feeble action of the Commission on Elections and the electoral tribunal when the results were contested.

With the same thinking and proofs of fraud and suspicious canvas reports, partisans of Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago believe that it was not President Fidel Valdez Ramos but Mrs. Santiago who had won in the May 11, 1992 election, in which, other than Ramos and Santiago, the other candidates were Imelda Marcos, Jovito Salonga, Salvador Laurel and Eduardo Cojuangco Jr.

Index of failed states

Dishonest elections are, however, not only the basis for rating a country to be a “failed state” in the annual “Fund for Peace Index of Failed States” that comes out in the respected magazine, Foreign Policy, a property of the Slate subsidiary of The Washington Post.

Foreign Policy says the following are among the attributes that indicate a failed state:

“The state’s central government is so weak or ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory. It cannot adequately provide services. There is widespread corruption and criminality. There are many refugees from parts of the country to another and involuntary movement of populations. There is sharp economic decline.”

One can perversely argue that our Republic’s having illegitimate because fraudulently elected officials and lawmakers is in fact an indication of the central government’s strength and effectiveness—for the fraudulently elected and proclaimed winners are always the administration or central government candidates.

But in the criterion of adequately providing government services—the services, for example, of keeping the highways and roads passable throughout the year, of maintaining good universal basic education for all (whether rich or poor), and keeping peace and order, city traffic smooth, and the rule of law respected by officials and the citizenry—the Philippines is obviously a failed state.

Also in the criterion of widespread corruption and criminality, our Republic is definitely a failed state. And there are many refugees from parts of the country to another and involuntary movement of populations, because of the unresolved communist and Moro rebellions and such horrors as the Maguindanao Massacre and those last year perpetrated by allegedly “rogue”Moro Islamic Liberation Front commanders. There is still the threat of a humanitarian crisis in Mindanao caused by the displacement of thousands of families.


Middle income?

The only department of life in which the Philippine state cannot be said to be a failure is arguably in there being “no sharp economic decline” because our economy is not in recession while the rich world is. The truth, however, is that the economic decline is sharp. GDP growth was a high 7.3 percent in 2007. It was down to 3.8 percent in 2008. And this year it could be as low as 0.8, although it could be above that up to 1.5 percent.

But what makes more than 30 million Filipinos feel and know they have a “failed state”—and an uncaring government—is that they are hungry and are miserably poor. Institutions abroad monitoring how the government fares in meeting the UN’s Millennium Development Goals are giving the Arroyo administration poor marks in poverty and graft reduction.

The USA’s Millennium Challenge Corporation has, thank God, seen the Philippines to be worthy of getting some funding because it has advanced somewhat in the struggle to meet the MDGs. And it recently was big news that America’s State Department chief, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, has spoken warmly of the Philippines for advancing to lower-middle-income status from low-income.

This is a description of the Philippines as a state not of the Filipinos as a people. The majority of our people—those who are destitute, merely very poor, poor, not poor but just a bit above the so-called poverty line, and those who are mendaciously called the poorer members of the middle class—do not enjoy those basic and commonplace amenities that give families in other countries a sense of day-to-day human dignity.

Warned of failing

In the 2009 Fund for Peace Fund/Foreign Policy Failed States Index, the Philippines is on a list of states that are being warned to shape up lest they drop to failed state status.

The No. 1 failed state is Somalia, followed by No.2 Zimbabwe. North Korea is 17. Iran is 38.

Syria, No. 39, tops the countries that are “at the risk of failing.” Our fellow Asean country Laos is No. 44.
Cambodia is no 49. We are No. 52. More powerful and very rich China is No. 57. India is 97. Indonesia, at No. 62, Thailand No. 79, Malaysia 115 and Brunei 118 are farther away from being failed states.

Of course, the richer and more stable countries of Western Europe, and South Korea, Japan and Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are farthest away from failed state status.

More prison escapes, massacres, disappearances, hunger, poverty and fraudulent elections will push us up to the sad, failed state category of Somalia and Zimbabwe.