IT did not take long after the declaration of Bagong Pilipinas — that it is now morning in the modern, dynamic and inclusive Philippines — that the rude awakening came, and the message bearer was neither a member of the political opposition nor a part of the underground Left. The business magazine Forbes, probably the most prolific wealth tracker in the world, came out with its yearly list of the world's wealthiest families and individuals. Just a bare-bones report on names and, across each name, a figure that represented an estimate of that name's wealth. Forbes, as usual, operated in the usual environment of complete agnosticism. It deliberately withheld pointing out the basic fact that in some of the countries where a few families and individuals hold obscene and grotesque wealth, mass poverty is deeply rooted and intractable.

One such country is the Philippines, a country of extreme wealth for a few and extreme poverty for the huddled masses below. It is a settled equation, unchanged through generations, resilient to shifts in political power, steady through social upheavals and epidemics, the only lay of society carved in stone.