By Alon Calinao Dy: It is believed that Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) was the strongest typhoon that ever hit in the Philippines, killing more than 8,000 people and damaging many properties that until now Filipinos do not know what to do.
Filipinos were very thankful for the assistance of foreign countries. They donated money, food, medicines, and even built homes for the Yolanda survivors. They also sent their medical teams to aid the victims. But, why do foreign countries do not trust our political leaders?
The United Nations know that our political system is not that secure, as we have some government officials who just think of their welfare instead of others. They are very much aware that if they donate goods to the wrong people, victims may starve to death and wouldn't receive food, clean water, medicine or shelter, which are the basic human survival needs.
The problem for many Filipinos is that we always tend to blame The President of the Republic. Filipinos do not consider a bigger picture here. Take a look around you that even local officials are crooked. That is no longer the control of the head of the state, since every corrupt official has a personality issue.
The late, great Lee Yuan Yew said, “Mine is a very matter-of-fact approach to the problem. If you can select a population and they're educated and they're properly brought up, then you don't have to use too much of the stick because they would already have been trained. It's like with dogs. You train it in a proper way from small. It will know that it's got to leave, go outside to pee and to defecate. No, we are not that kind of society. We had to train adult dogs who even today deliberately urinate in the lifts.”
Many Filipinos are educated people, but lots of them have problems with the discipline. I believe discipline is more important than education. You can have a respectable education and qualifications of a certain professional, but without a proper discipline and respect towards others, it would mean nothing to me.
Filipinos need to realize that if they want to uplift the lives of the poor, they need a good education to discipline. I guess that is the hardest subject that every student wants to learn from the teacher. It is often the power of self-taught. In short, Filipinos need a discipline to learn from the past mistakes. For instance, if you know that politician is a corrupt leader, then don't vote for him if ever he runs the office again.
