Going for the Jugular

( A reprint from the INQ7.net "Mixed Media" by Sylvia L. Mayuga with emailed permission from the contributing guest columnist Louie Fernandez lfern945@optonline.net as requested by Gus Tutanes)

When the GMA-Garci crisis began last summer, in the flood of e-mailed responses and letters to the editor was this patriot's letter from the Fil-American Louie Fernandez. Practical, philosophical and comical on the modern Filipino experience, his Re-inventing the Pinoy suggests a way to go for the jugular of our racial impasse nowhere else but inside ourselves:

Every Pinoy should strive to be the best at whatever he does -- the best carpenter, writer, basurero, engineer, ombudsman, and yes even the best kurakot politician or government functionary. Fear not. Since good triumphs over evil, the best ombudsman will soon enough catch even the best grafters and get them shot, everyone of them. Yes, sir!

With every Pinoy at every level striving for excellence or at least dutifully doing what is required of them, our current decrepit society will be up to snuff and humming in no time.

Dyahe, pare.

Jean Paul Sartre once said that words are loaded pistols. Indeed, they are also like shards of glass that burrow deep into the psyche and bleed the victim to a slow lingering death.

I propose that the word dyahe, a legacy of the colonial past that continues to subjugate us mentally, not be uttered again and thrown into the dustbin. Dyahe or nakakahiya impedes initiative, risk-taking, innovation and progress. This is not to say we are at liberty to transgress and be walanghiya. All I am saying is that if we break no law and hurt no one, who cares what others say? If they call us aggressive, we should consider it a compliment, for we are being part of the solution. We are simply being confident and self-reliant.

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