Some Heat

Posted by Robin Hemley on May 5, 2009 9:32 AM

My McSweeney's column on "The Great Book Blockade of 2009" seems to have generated some heat in the Philippines and the U.S., mostly positive. It seems I got a couple of minor things wrong in the original piece. I misspelled an Undersecretary's name -- it should be "Espela," not "Espele," and she's with the Department of Finance not the Department of Customs, but, well, the DOC is under the DOF, so as one blogger puts it, "shrug."

The larger point stands, that the Philippines is violating an international treaty, The Florence Agreement, by imposing any kind of duty on imported books.

One letter writer, whom I'll keep anonymous, had another disagreement with me, mainly my glancing reference to the blacklist on the Philippines imposed by the G20 nations. The letter writer started out reasonably enough but then took the ad hominem approach to rebuttal . . . I'll print his letter to McSweeney's here as well as my response.

"Dear sir: 

I've read the article you wrote about the recent decision of
Philippine Customs to tax books, and I quite agree with your point.
What disturb me though is that your statement about G20 blacklisting
the Philippines is misleading (and inaccurate). The G20 blacklisted
the Philippines (together with Malaysia, Costa Rica and Uruguay)
because Philippine laws make it hard to open bank records of
individuals; tax standards in the country are different, not because
of "corrupt practices" as you are leading your readers to believe. You
should have also noted that the blacklist was removed already. And
personally, Switzerland and the rest of those tiny European states
have more morally questionable banking practices than the Philippines,
having hidden billions of dollars stolen by dictators such as
Marcos. 

It's funny how you Americans gloat and condescend about how
messed up the Philippines is, considering that you colonized us (and
killed a few lot of us in the process) and meddled with our internal
affairs for more than a century now. Maybe you should go back to the
US and help another Bush get to the White House."

My response:

When I wrote the piece several months back, the designation had not
been removed. This seems a bit of a "not seeing the forest for the
trees situation." While on this point, the letter writer might be
technically correct, the larger point is that the Philippines is and
remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and is
considered such by the vast majority of its own people, who suffer the
greed of government officials. Virtually every week, a new corruption
scandal hits the front pages of the newspapers in the Philippines,
each example more egregious than the last. The G20 news just happened
to be the story of the week when I wrote up my dispatch. What disturbs
ME is that the corrupt government can always rely on such
nationalistic and defensive sentiments as the letter writer's when
faced with any outside criticism. For the record, while I'm a U.S.
citizen, I didn't participate in the colonization of the Philippines
(which happened well over a century ago) and I didn't vote for Bush.
The fact that the U.S. has its own problems does not in any way
diminish the points made in my piece. The argument, "Bush was bad,
you colonized us, so don't criticize us," doesn't wash. I'm certainly
not gloating or condescending either, as I'm accused. I feel sad that
a country I love as much as the Philippines has to suffer under its
present colonizers, its own government officials, while always able to
rely on knee-jerk reactions as those of the letter writer. Happily,
many Filipino bloggers and book lovers and some in the mainstream
media have reacted positively to my piece and are now creating a stir
to rectify this terrible situation.

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