United States and Philippines

Your recent articles on the activities of U.S.-resident Filipinos and the current political situation in the Philippines are most welcome to the 400,000 or so Filipinos now living in Southern California. However, there are other important aspects of the current situation in the Philippines that have not been examined closely by your newspaper or other media.

Firstly, the vocal pro- and anti-Marcos activists that have been spotlighted by the media are actually of no significance in the total Philippine political equation. Most of these expatriates have been away from the country for over a decade and are known only to a handful of ordinary Filipinos in the islands.

Secondly, most of these people that one reads about in the papers or interviewed on TV belong to the old political order, which can be considered as having produced Ferdinand Marcos and his cronies. One can consider them and Marcos as two sides of the same coin.

The problems faced by the Filipino nation today came about as a result of the failure of the political and economic leadership class to put the interests of the country and the people ahead of their own personal interests. What has happened is that those who had political and economic power exercised that power to enrich themselves. Instead of reinvesting their wealth in the country, they have transferred it to foreign shores. Many critics of Marcos are just as guilty of this economic crime as are the Marcos family and cronies.

No one on earth knows what is going to happen to the country after Feb. 7. God knows what Marcos is planning to do, but he isn’t telling anybody. But even Marcos no longer has the final say in the denouement of the complex situation. It will be decided by the pro- and anti-Marcos elements of the military, the communist-led NPA guerrillas, the private political armies, and the ordinary citizens acting en masse.

We can only hope that the result will be a truly democratic government. If not, maybe President Reagan will have sufficient reasons to send in the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Army Rangers. After all, the outcome is a thousand times more important that what could have happened in Grenada had the United States done nothing.

EUGENIO V. CORAZO

Granada Hills