ECONOMICS has been described as a way of life, as behavior patterns in the use of limited resources. With its dependence on foreign investors and foreign creditors, emulation of the American individualist lifestyle and consumerism, feudal structure. IMF-WB dictates, etc., we have a system that is bankrupt. And we need to change it.

We need a cultural transformation. Things cannot continue this way or we will surely perish as a nation. There is need to change the people’s world-view.

We have to return to basics and start on what resources are really with us, belong to us, and have in our hands. We have one another. We are one another’s kapwa. We have a rich heritage of strong community. We can combine our strengths and work together in synergy to build a new system.

Filipinos need to have a renewal in thinking, substantial change in institutions, technology and leaders who have embraced new ways.

No longer can we afford to allow the continuance of such practices as kanya-kanya and palakasan, we have to put an end to the mentality of subservience to foreign “superiors” and turn to valuing our collective honor and sovereignty as a nation. We cannot keep on depending on foreign money, on foreign approval, on foreign demand for goods we can sell. We of the National Economic Protectionism Association or NEPA seek to start building a community that lives the philosophies of pakikipag-kapwa, and are mutually-supportive (“tangkilikan”), living the spirit of bayanihan.

The Spirit of Bayanihan should fire up our enthusiasm and give us the needed energy for all these things that we want to do. Bayanihan comes from the language of our heroic ancestors who had this verb “magbayani” which they used to mean helping in community efforts without demanding material payment.

Therefore, our concerted efforts to build strong barangay-centered business ecosystems that would pursue a strong policy advocacy for effectively rescuing and uplifting the national economy, are forms of “pagbabayanihan.”

In the national context, the Spirit of Bayanihan breathes vibrantly in Nationalism.

As the Philippine economy continues to worsen, there is no other course for NEPA and all other honorable and pragmatic Filipinos but to engage in organization- and institution-building towards a strong national collective stakeholdership and advocacy in economic nationalism.

Contrary to the pronouncements of apologists of globalization, nationalism is not only relevant up to now, it is our only hope for national survival. Far from being against development and progress, economic nationalism is the Filipino people’s only hope for real development.

We have so much in resources that we can synergize.  We still have rich natural resources that we can finally start utilizing for our own country’s economic benefit by not selling them down the river hurriedly and therefore very cheaply.
We also have so much human resources in our people’s skills and, more importantly, in deep-seated sense of honor and industry that can be reawakened and fully harnessed if only we can make them work in a system of collective self-help in an atmosphere of social justice.

Through millions of mutually-beneficial Tangkilikan transactions among empowered local communities, cooperatives, small and medium enterprises and groups like NEPA, we can save our nation from sinking ever deeper into the mire of mass poverty, massive unemployment, and Filipino enterprises closing shop.

Such transactions and interlinking enterprises are building blocks that can be synergized as the inner strength and basis for a strong, independent and progressive Philippine economy.

One important term in our nation’s cultural heritage is loob. It finds form in such terms as “kalooban,” and lakas ng loob. It is the innermost part of our pagpapakatao on which basis we engage in pakikipagkapwa-tao.

Being externally dependent from the time of our colonization four centuries ago is one stark indicator that the foreign overlords had succeeded in effectively conquering our spirit. To put it in our own words, nasiraan tayo ng loob.

But if we all heed the call for Tangkilikan, in the Spirit of Bayanihan, we can recover our sense of collective self-esteem, sense of collective fate, and even some common sense to overhaul our official economic policies.

NEPA has raised that call, and some organizations have started to come forward and join in this crusade.

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