‘Ours was a head start lost. But if we desire to start all over again, we need to be fully committed. And prepared for the long haul.’
I made a quick trip to Singapore yesterday to meet up with Linda Low, co-founder of Thinking Management Techniques in the 1990s, who had an exclusive license in this part of the globe for all of the creativity courses of Dr. Edward de Bono. I was the first Filipino, actually, to be certified as an instructor of the Six Hats Technique in 1994 and it was Dr. de Bono himself who awarded me my certificate.
That was 30 years ago. A long time, but the knowledge remains intact in my (aging) brain. And it was with an eye to my retirement from the corporate world in a little over 800 days that Linda and I met to discuss options, including my reviving a training program I had for a little over a year back then.
Returning to Singapore (gosh, it was soooo humid) left me once again reacting the way many other Filipinos react when they get to visit other countries, neighbors or beyond the seas: comparing and contrasting how things are at home versus how things are in the other country. And usually, the comparison reflects badly on back home.
The truth is, especially in our part of the world, the Philippines had a head start. But we dropped the ball – and have not picked it up to run with it ever since.
We list our head start due to a number of factors – corrupt leadership put in place by people who do not value their vote as much as they should (they prefer to lose huge to real change!) and external factors way beyond our control (OPEC in 1974, the financial crises in 1997 and 2007 and, of course, natural calamities). Taken together, the result is stagnation in the Philippines if compared to the way our neighbors have risen from their own crises.
Truly a head start lost.
My late paternal aunt Gloria, an educator all her life, once stayed in Singapore in the 1970s when she was in a program hosted by the RELC – the Regional English Language Center. Long after she retired and after I had her cataracts surgically removed, I brought her back to Singapore 20 years later. And when we landed at the airport at Changi, the first thing she asked me was, “I thought we were going to Singapore.”
That was her constant refrain as we toured the island she knew in the 1970s, with a river that would give our Pasig a run for its polluted money. It was not the Singapore she knew, transformed within less than a generation.
Of course, it was not without its own “costs.”
We all know how Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, was attacked as a dictator, brooking no opposition on the streets or within parliament, where not even one seat could be conceded to the opposition. Lee had his reasons – he was sensitive to the sensitivities of a multi-racial society that he needed to hold together amid bigger neighbors who weren’t always friendly. And he had seen how race riots could cripple his tiny enclave and he needed to make sure Singapore wouldn’t be stillborn.
He was iron-fisted, yes, but he delivered results.
And – most importantly – he enriched his country and his countrymen, not himself. And even if there was some dynastic succession in son Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore always had a method of choosing the best and the brightest to run all its government ministries, producing today’s PM.
Ours was a head start lost. But if we desire to start all over again, we need to be fully committed. And prepared for the long haul.
