AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)
Byline: Juan L. Mercado
REACTIONS from New York, Florida to Quezon City have come fast, thick and articulate to the issue raised in our Jan 26. column, "Diaspora as economic clout."
Can Filipinos abroad muster economic muscle to create a critical mass enough to shatter crony governance that brought us all to the brink of "democratic exhaustion"? that column asked.
"Filipinos of the diaspora"-a thousand or more delegates who have succeeded abroad in their fields, yet were drawn back to their native sod-confronted that issue at the Global Networking Pinoy convention in Cebu. So did delegates to the Cultural Center's Karangalan conference and "Pinoy Unleashed" at the Ultra.
Echoing John Kennedy's 1961 inaugural theme-"Ask not what your country can do for you..."-they wondered: how could they help a country skirting democratic debility?
Use your economic clout to sledge-hammer reforms at home, First Pacific's Manuel Pangilinan suggested. Replace systems crammed with cronies with a meritocracy that rewards excellence. Otherwise, the best will vamoose at the first visa.