Category: 2010

de quiros, aquino, edsa

conrado de quiros is sounding like a broken record these days, insisting that “edsa” &  “people power” and “good vs. evil” are the themes to work on if we want to see noynoy aquino again racing ahead of the pack like after his mom died.

and so a guy asked him daw:

“DON’T you think that transforming the choice into a moral one is a little too high for the masa to grasp? Don’t you think the better tack would be to talk about gut issues (malapit sa bituka)?”

the noted columnist’s reply is so last decade:

Not at all.

To begin with, you would not be transforming anything. You would not be raising or reducing or reshaping anything. That was exactly how the masa saw the choice from the very start, when Cory died and Noynoy Aquino announced his intention to run: the choice was a moral one. It was not a gratuitous choice between presidential candidates, between Noynoy and Villar (Villar never even figured in the equation), between what the candidates had to offer. It was a desperate choice between the GMA curse and the Cory legacy, between Noynoy (or what he represented) and Gloria (or what she is), between life and death.

It was a choice between Good and Evil.

The fact that Noynoy got more than 60 percent showed this wasn’t merely a middle-class or elite sentiment…

yes, but that was then, we were in grief, we were emotional and romantic, we wanted more of cory and ninoy (not of gma) and noynoy seemed like the next best thing.   but this is now, we have been through a lot since cory died — killer floods, the ampatuan massacre, the murder of the rh bill, and now the illegal arrest and torture of 43 ngo health workers — and some of us are looking for answers to many questions beyond who-what is good who-what is evil, according to whom?   dams are good in times of reasonable rain, but evil in times of excessive rain.   due process is good, but why is it that the law is more protective of the rights of indicted evil-doers?   and where is due process for the health workers accused of being bomb-makers?   is the military good or evil?    is contraception good or evil?   it’s all too muddled to work as a winnowing concept and yet de quiros thinks the world of this good vs. evil theme.

For a long, long time, GMA was seen as the worst leader this country has ever had after Marcos, or for some even before Marcos. Yet all that it elicited from the public was cynicism and text jokes. It was only after Cory died and Noynoy arose in her wake that the cynicism turned into a revulsion for an intolerable situation and the text jokes turned into an epic desire to change things.

For the Aquino camp, that means it’s not just enough to harp on the hell that the GMA curse is, or the heaven that the Cory legacy can be, it needs to harp on the hell that the GMA curse is and the heaven that the Cory legacy can be, at the same time. For the Aquino camp, that means that it’s not just enough to harp on Villar as the embodiment, continuation or extension of GMA (literally or in a kindred way) or Noynoy as the inheritor, keeper, and perpetuator of the Cory legacy, it needs to harp on the one as the disease and on the other as the cure.

but what is this heavenly change that cory’s legacy will bring about through noynoy?   mababaw ang kaligayahan ni de quiros.

Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for education? Simply removing the monsters whose very existence teaches the young that lying, cheating and stealing are rewarded and whistle-blowing, telling the truth, and being courageous are punished is an entire curriculum unto itself. Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for economic development? Simply stopping a reign of corruption stops poverty completely literally in that there is no mahirap where there is no korap, and completely spiritually in that nothing impoverishes a country more than an utter lack of moralidad. Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for national security? You arrest the usurpers who made the country home to desperation and insecurity, and line them up against the wall, or its legal equivalent since we don’t have the death penalty anymore, though we can always make an exception, and we will have more security than can be guaranteed by the armed forces or the insurance companies.

but we should care about a presidential candidate’s plans for education; the curriculum problem goes beyond / goes deeper, it’s not just ethical and moral but academic and pedagogic and even a problem of language.   and we should care about noynoy’s plans for economic development because de quiros exaggerates, stopping corruption will not stop poverty “completely literally”: it would only mean a little more money for health education and dole-outs for some but not nearly enough to make a sustainable difference in the lives of the many many poor, not while the oligarchy reigns and the debt policy rules.    and we should care about noynoy’s plans for national security because current policies discriminate against pinoys (think vfa) and civil society (pro-poor ngos) and do nothing to secure our environment, and our very lives, from deadly trash and irresponsible land use and destructive mining and rapid reckless deforestation.

in another column, de quiros waxes nostalgic about edsa and people power and the cory magic.

The Cory magic hasn’t lost its magic, it has simply not been used. Or the Cory magic hasn’t lost its magic, it has simply been lost on the people who held it in their hands but never knew what they had. The Cory magic is Edsa. The Cory magic is People Power. The Cory magic is the glimmer of hope piercing through the dark of despair.

I said last year that the Noynoy camp had a tremendous advantage in that the opening of the year presented two Edsas, January being Edsa II and February being Edsa I. Both resonated with good triumphing over evil, a concept GMA has been at pains to make people forget, which is why she has tried to hide the very thing—and people, who were Cory and Jaime Cardinal Sin—that brought her to power. Both stood to unleash the Cory magic in all its glory.

January came and went, and not a single statement on Edsa, or about Edsa, issued from the lips of the Aquino camp. We’re on the second week of February, and not a single statement on Edsa, or about Edsa, has issued from the lips of the Aquino camp. We’re on the fifth month after Noynoy declared his intention to run, and not much, if not not a single statement, has issued from the lips of the Aquino camp about their cries of anguish and anger from the pit of the land, about the glimmer of hope piercing through the dark of despair, about the people and their power.

The Cory magic is not something that works by itself, it works only by being used. The Cory magic is Edsa, the Cory magic is People Power, the Cory magic is people drawing the line, demanding change, commanding change, shouting at the top of their lungs, “tama na, sobra na, palitan na.” You do not invoke these things, you do not conjure these things, you do not say the magic words that unleash these things—there is no Cory magic.

ah, yes, EDSA.   de quiros makes it seem like we are back in 1986 and the choice is simple, black and white, good vs. evil, cory vs. marcos.    indeed “tama na, sobra na, palitan na” were magic words back then, but it was clear kung sino ang dapat palitan at sino ang dapat ipalit, the opposition being united behind one cory (doy did a mar upon the clamor of the people).   eh hindi naman ganyan ang sitwasyon ngayon.   ang daming choice.   maliban kay mar, walang kandidatong kusang nagbibigaydaan kay noynoy, each one thinks himself/herself as the good one vs. the evil one.   and maybe all of them are right, all in their own small ways.

if the object was were to beat gma’s annointed and everything evil she stands for in the may elections, and if the strategy was were to go by, be guided by, the EDSA tradition, then villar erap gordon gibo jamby perlas bro.eddie and jc, should have, one and all, when cory died, humbly nobly happily rallied behind noynoy as the one opposition candidate.   of course it didn’t happen because there was no clamor to that effect.   the real clamor is for CHANGE but noynoy is only promising small change — to stop corruption and streamline the system, the very system that needs changing.

truth to tell, it’s jamby madrigal and nicanor perlas who are running on platforms of CHANGE, and noynoy and the rest should be giving way to them, i.e., if we are to go by EDSA.   but the people aren’t ready, pinagiisipan pa nila, pinagtatalunan pa, kung sino ano ba talaga ang paniniwalaan, ano nga ba yung tama na, alin ba ang sobra na, paano ba papalitan, atano ang ipapalit.   clearly people power continues on “hold” while seeking to level-up beyond good vs. evil.

HOW MONA LISA DIED

Walden Bello

Representative Edcel Lagman of Albay has a term for legislative measures that gain approval in a congressional committee yet never make it to a full floor debate owing to one reason or other. He calls them “Mona Lisa” bills. “Mona Lisa” because, as he explains, “as that line from Nat King Cole’s famous song goes, ‘they just lie there and they die there.’.”

The Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008 – better known as the “RH bill” – is one of those Mona Lisa bills. The RH bill, however, did not die of neglect or lack of interest, which is the case with most of these measures. In this case, Mona Lisa was murdered.

During the last three Congresses, RH has been a topic that has elicited great controversy owing to rock solid opposition from the Catholic Church. In the 14th Congress, however, it was able to win approval in the Committee on Health, setting the stage for a much-awaited debate on the House floor. RH was listed as a priority bill throughout 2009; indeed, before the Christmas recess, the rules for the debate on it were being discussed.

When the House reassembled on January 18, however, RH had disappeared from the Speaker of the House’s list of priority bills. Inquiries by proponents of the bill produced evasive replies from the House leadership. When the House adjourned for the elections on Feb 3, RH was dead. The reason, however, was painfully obvious.

In December, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) instructed the electorate not to vote for candidates who espoused RH. Alongside this decree had unfolded a massive campaign that involved systematic disinformation about the bill. Among the malicious allegations that were spread was that the bill imposes penalties on parents who do not allow their children to have premarital sex. Another was that the bill promotes the use of abortifacients or methods of contraception that induce abortion.

It was not in the interest of the anti-RH lobby to have an open debate on the House floor because a rational, enlightened exchange would have revealed the aims of the bill to be not only morally legitimate but ethically imperative. Foremost among these goals is to provide women with the information and means to enhance their reproductive health. Second is to provide partners with the information and means to practice family planning. Third is to provide men and women with the information and means to avoid sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV-AIDS, which has now reached epidemic proportions.

The anti-RH lobby knew that even if the bill lost on the House floor, a debate on it would have contributed immensely to the enlightenment of the Catholic electorate, the majority of which, according to recent surveys, already favor modern methods of family planning and enhancing reproductive health. Thus, deploying its tremendous political clout, the lobby colluded with the House leadership to carry out a silent procedural homicide.

There is a great deal at stake in the RH debate. One of them is the preservation of the principle of the separation of Church and State. The Church seeks to prevent the State from having a say on reproductive issues. Yet the State must have a say since it has a responsibility for the health of the country and the health of women citizens in particular. The State must concern itself with reproductive issues because it must balance the needs of society and the fragility of the environment. The State must involve itself with reproductive concerns because it has a mandate to end poverty and promote national development.

Another bedrock principle of our liberal democracy that is threatened by the Church campaign against RH is pluralism. Many constituencies favor RH, and among these are other religious organizations, including Christian churches. Yet one religious denomination arrogates to itself the right to speak for all religions and to veto the opinion of other religious organizations on reproductive rights. This is absolutism, not democracy, and if allowed to go unchecked, it will erode the tolerance that is an essential component for the survival of our pluralistic polity.

Pro-RH people are not against the Catholic Church. Indeed, most admire the Church’s stance on many other issues – for instance, its urging voters to vote for candidates according to the dictates of their conscience. But does not this stand promoting respect for the individual’s conscience not contradict its ordering voters not to vote for pro-RH candidates?

The Church, to its credit, supports measures that would end poverty, like agrarian reform. Yet it opposes an initiative that would address one of the key causes of poverty, which is the failure of poor families to control the size of their families through natural means?

The Church has – again to its credit – taken up the cudgels for the environment. But it opposes effective family planning measures that would rein in one of the key forces behind environmental degradation: unrestrained population growth.

The Church lobby is powerful. Not only has it intimidated Speaker Prospero Nograles and the House leadership into killing RH procedurally. It has also now forced presidential contender Gilbert Teodoro to renounce his support for RH. And there are reports that Noynoy Aquino is also backing away from his support for RH.

Punishing people at the polls for their beliefs is certainly less reprehensible than burning them at the stake, which the Church did to dissenters centuries ago. But resorting to electoral punishment exhibits the same absolutist frame of mind that threatened Galileo with burning if he did not recant.

Yet, just as we have left the Inquisition behind, so are we destined to advance towards a more tolerant pluralist polity that makes decisions based not on intimidation and threat but on enlightened democratic debate. Mona Lisa may have been murdered this time around, but let those who have killed her be put on notice that, as Congressman Lagman predicted, she will be resurrected in the 15th Congress or in succeeding Congresses until she is finally enacted into law.

cowards all

it’s not only manny villar, who has been called a coward for refusing to answer questions re the c-5 extensions that allegedly benefitted his real estate empire in the millions, billions.   i don’t even think that snubbing the senate is as much a matter of cowardice as of some kinda guilt, or why won’t he take questions in the proper forum?   “is manny villar blameless? is the pope protestant?”

by cowards all i mean all five leading presidential candidates noynoy villar erap gibo and gordon, for not having the audacity, the daring, to think big and brave and to talk the radical changes that are implied in the promise of good governance.

this is not just a failure of the candidates though but a failure too of the electorate for not demanding more of these guys, which in turn is a failure of the media for inadequately informing and inspiring themselves, and the people, to ask demand clamor shout-out for changes beyond an end to corruption.   particularly changes in a system that was designed, in the first place, to benefit the few elite and NOT the manymanymanymanymany poor, as we should all see by now if only we hadn’t become too lazy to read and think and be critical, and  if only we would stop trusting in these candidates’ motherhood statements na kunyari they have the best interests of the poor at heart, because they don’t; rather they’re quite willing to play along with the same forces, inside and outside, that gloria arroyo (not to speak of past administrations, including erap, all the way back to the commonwealth) has been playing along with, to the detriment and degradation of our land and our economy, our people and our sovereignty.

they are cowards all, these leaders who don’t have the courage to stand up to the catholic church on the RH bill and sex education, never mind that 7 out of 10 filipinos want need deserve it.   cowards all who won’t stand up to the U.S. of A. on the chauvinist imperialist VFA and the IMF-WB-imposed “development plans” that over the decades have rendered the country nowhere near “developed”, rather turned us into the basket case of the ASEAN, basket-case meaning no legs of our own to stand on, no arms to work and feed ourselves with, how humiliating, how depressing.

they are cowards all.   afraid, not of going to hell if they defy the church’s stand on RH and sex education, just afraid of losing votes that the church allegedly commands.   cowards all.   afraid of espousing any kind of deep-seated change not because it’s undoable but out of fear and disinclination to defy and displease uncle sam, paano na ang campaign contributions, aray, paano na ang “special” fil-am relations, lol, how colonial the mentality pa rin.

it bears repeating what the journalist tony abaya of manilastandardtoday wrote back in august 2009 in response to rumors that noynoy might run: that what the country needs is a forward-looking president, a truly revolutionary president, someone with the attributes and visions of lee kwan yew, mahathir mohamad and gen. park chung hee:

… it is someone who has the qualities of these three foreign leaders that the Philippines badly needs in order to overcome decades of consistently poor governance, restore our badly battered self esteem, and draw for us a credible vision of what we want our country to be.

We need someone like Lee Kwan Yew who was/is personally incorruptible and at the same time was/is so conversant with economics and international relations that he could speak ex-tempore and defend his policies before an assembly of multinational CEOs and diplomats and made/make solid sense, whether they agreed/agree with him or not.

In addition we need the strong sense of nationalism of Mahathir Mohamad who in the 1980s drew a vision – Malaysia Vision 2020, that sought and seeks to transform Malaysia into a fully industrialized country by the year 2020 – that he was able to convince the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious people of Malaysia to embrace as worthy of their national loyalty, beyond the narrow appeals of their tribes and ethnic groups. No mean feat, considering the catastrophic demise of equally multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious federal Yugoslavia in the 1990s that cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Mahathir’s nationalism also expressed itself in his readiness to fearlessly fire back at other countries, other world leaders, as well as international agencies whenever he felt they were trampling on the national self-interests of Malaysia.

We also need the single-minded determination of Gen. Park Chung Hee to transform his impoverished, resource-poor and inconsequential Republic of Korea from 1961 to 1979 (when he was assassinated) into a fully industrialized country that is now one of the ten biggest economies in the world.

… this is what the Philippines needs, a leader who can start and lead a revolution, a peaceful one, as much as possible; a violent one, if necessary.

anything less is just not good enough.  hindi na lang ako boboto.

oh and what’s this BS about villar NOT belonging to the elite just because he started out poor, unlike noynoy and gibo?   c’mon, rene azurin, you can do better than that.   by any reckoning, villar and the tsinoy taipans who all started out poor are very much a part of today’s elite, the irresponsible filipino elite, that wittingly or unwittingly collaborates with foreign powers, keeping the masses poor and marginalized.

the irresponsible filipino elite

i’ve been fretting over, and collecting columns about, the yawning gap between the few filipino rich and the manymanymany filipino poor for some time now, wondering why other southeast asian countries are able to bridge lessen / shrink the gap, but not the philippines.   here are three online essays that explain why, the latest by business world‘s jemy gatdula, which he writes in relation to the 2010 elections.   the two others are by editorial consultant juan c. gatbonton and political economist calixto v. chikiamco, both of the manila times.

TAMA NA, SOBRA NA, PALITAN NA
Jemy Gatdula

… the statistic that around 10% of the population owns around 80% of the nation’s wealth remains roughly true. What is even more disturbing, save for the huge immigration influx that was done during the Marcos years (particularly in the 1970s), the families that make up that wealthy 10% have not changed through the years. This accounts for a profoundly stagnant social mobility, thus making it more bizarre for our voting population to actually be giving somebody, who has nothing to credit him but his parents’ names, an indecent shot at the presidency. By adding to this the fact that somewhere around 30-40% of the country’s 80 million citizens are under the poverty line, then one can see how obscene a 10% wealthy figure is. Indeed, the attitude of the elite seems to be: it’s all right to help the poor so long as they know their place — and stay there.

Joe Studwell, in his Asian Godfathers, made an analysis on the Philippines that is particularly relevant:

“The old political elite, restored by godfather progeny Corazon Aquino after Marcos’ departure in 1986, appears as entrenched as ever. The current president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo — herself the daughter of a former president — spends much of her time fending off congressional attempts to impeach her because of the possibly unconstitutional manner in which she ousted her predecessor, Joseph Estrada, 2001, and allegations of vote-rigging in her own election victory in 2004. x x x Faith in the political process is falling, communist insurgency is present in most provinces, and the local elite remains the most selfish and self-serving in the region. The Philippines’ best known living author, Francisco Sionil Jose, lamented in the Far Eastern Economic Review in December 2004: ’We are poor because our elites have no sense of nation. They collaborate with whoever rules — the Spaniards, the Japanese, the Americans and, in recent times, Marcos. Our elites imbibed the values of the colonizer.’ The Philippines, in short, has never moved on from the colonial era and the patterns of amoral elite dominance that it created.” (Asian Godfathers, 2007, pp.180-181)

A reading of Sandra Burton’s Impossible Dream shows how those in power are so related or linked to each other that our history is seemingly like one long sequence political rigodon. If Burton’s account is accurate: it was a Laurel who acquitted Ferdinand Marcos of murder, a Roxas who liberated him from a US army brig, a Quezon who urged him to be in public life, a Macapagal who awarded him half of his war medals, and a Magsaysay who served as godfather to his wedding. Marcos had Ninoy Aquino as a fraternity brother. And before Aquino married Cory, he was actually dating, guess who? Imelda Romualdez.

Obviously, every country has an elite. Nevertheless, developed countries’ healthy economy and social conditions would indicate a more fluid social mobility rate than that being demonstrated by the Philippines. A cursory look at our history would show the same families, the same surnames, continuously lording it over Philippine affairs. History would also show, however, that they consistently failed the country. In the end, while a country indeed gets the leaders it deserves, it must also be considered that in our case the electorate has had a history of poor quality to choose from. This, then, in sum is our nation’s problem: the monopolization of political and economic power by a narrow minded and incompetent oligarchy.

Interestingly, most of the political class (which, it must be remembered, also constitutes the wealthy end of our social spectrum) would point to corruption as the problem. No, it’s not. It’s the elite who are the problem. Commentators from apparently different ends of the globalization debate converge on this point: from Walden Bello (in his The Anti-development State) to Federico Macaranas and Scott Thompson (in their great Democracy and Discipline), to other books by different authors (The Rulemakers, Booty Capitalism, Sugar and the Origins of Modern Philippine Society, Malolos: The Crisis of the Republic, and Anarchy of Families).

Let us encourage the Filipino voter to not vote for anybody coming from the old political families, no matter how good their branding or packaging may be. They’re all part of the group that created the problems of our country. They’ve had their chance. And they sucked big time.

Tama na, sobra na, palitan na iyang mga lumang pamilya.

WHO ARE THE ELITE
They get the most of what there is to get
Juan T. Gatbonton

Our elite of power and wealth are extremely diverse. Their members range from the genteel remnants of the colonial hacendero families to the grossest political-warlord clans such as the Ampatuans of Maguindanao, who are accused of slaughtering 57 people in just one morning.

In between are the political kingmakers who “bet” on a likely candidate and then collect on their investment in business favors once the candidate wins an influential office. Their paragon is the Chinese-Filipino entrepreneur Lucio Tan, who apparently put up 70 percent of presidential candidate Joseph Estrada’s campaign funds in 1998.

The only thing our elite families have in common is that they still get the most of what there is to get. The Ampatuan godfather is reputed to have kept a nest egg of P400 million in an industrial-strength vault in one of his mansions.

Noblesse oblige

The time is long gone when the rich and powerful took fatherly care of their serfs and tenants, in return for their submission and respect. And the decay of this traditional consensus has made the lives of our poorest families less and less secure.

The social contract that had morally obliged the rich to protect the poor’s right to subsistence has been repealed. Whenever this right to live was threatened, as in Central Luzon beginning in the 1930s, the peasants took up arms, but “less often to destroy elites than to compel them to meet their moral obligations.”

Such unrest has widened, as the spread of the cash economy compelled patrons to turn their backs on their customary rights and duties. Besides, people no longer believe inequality to be divinely ordained, or that power is put to the service of society and its values.

Even the usual markers of elite status have been erased, among them the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged.

Landowning, or “not having to buy the rice you eat,” no longer brings social prestige. In Central Luzon, two successive insurgencies have driven away the sugar and rice hacenderos.

Meanwhile, many of the landowning families who have switched to manufacturing have lost out to Filipino-Chinese arrivistes. Having lost their power to monopolize markets, they proved too greedy, too nepotistic, too authoritarian, to survive global competition.

Rich and poor are separating, as in Disraeli’s England in the 1850s, into “two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy . . . ”

The Jesuit sociologist John J. Carroll believes that coercion has become the “operating theory” of our social relationships. Naked power has become the main mediator between rich and poor and power is used heedlessly to accumulate wealth and prestige for the power holders.

Gross inequality

One result is that income inequality has been rising, and at the expense of the lower-income groups. The historian Carlos Quirino estimated that in the 1970s, the country was “in the grip of about 50 leading families.” Even now, family ownership of the Philippine corporate sector is the most highly concentrated in East Asia.

The economist Arsenio Balisacan, whose field is poverty studies, notes that things have got really worse in the last six to seven years.

Academics from the University of the Philippines estimate that 35 percent of Filipinos live below the official poverty line. Our middle class has been shrinking. In 2006, the National Statistics Office placed it at 19.1 percent of all our people, down from 22.7 percent in 2000.

Gross inequality seems to be distorting even the conventional economic outcomes. In East Asia, because of egalitarian public policies, a percentage increase in GDP growth typically reduces poverty incidence by 2 percent. (Globally, a percentage increase in GDP reduces poverty by 1.6 percent.) GDP is the total value of goods and services produced in a country in a year.

But in the Philippines, a 1-percent increase in economic growth may in fact be accompanied by a 0.3-percent increase in the number of the poor. This is because economic growth is so highly concentrated: 65 percent of GDP is generated in Metro Manila and its satellite regions, Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog.

Power to the excluded

Inequality is notable not only in people’s incomes and status. What is worse, inequality is built into social and political structures that, in Father Carroll’s view, enable “certain groups or classes of people systematically [to] enjoy more than others the benefits which society can provide.”

Unequal institutions and legal systems affect the entire structure of national society and the way it apportions wealth and power. Systematic inequality pervades public policy, starting from a tax structure that falls on the poor more heavily than on the rich; to regulatory agencies unable to protect people against monopolies and cartels; through the steady decline in the budget share of social services; and public investments that favor the rich regions against the poor ones.

In the end, these elitist social structures can be moved only by some exertion of power from those excluded from them. Hence, the easing of inequality must await the time the Filipino poor are able to develop forms of autonomous organizations that will give them some leverage in dealing with people in authority.

OUR IRRESPONSIBLE ELITE
Calixto V. Chikiamco

I think it was Gen. (ret) Jose Almonte, former national security chief during the presidency of former President Fidel Ramos, who said that the Philippines had the most irresponsible elite in Asia.

Indeed, “Jo-al” has not been the first and only one who has made this observation. American political scientist Paul Hutchcroft calls the Philippine elite as “booty capitalists” who prey on the weak state for its rent-extraction.

The sorry history of the Philippines since independence is a reflection of the record of our irresponsible political and economic elite.

Compared to its neighbors, the Philippines is still mired in a
“development bog” and unable to reduce its widespread poverty. The Philippines has earned the moniker of “sick man of Asia”-thanks to its irresponsible elite.

And it’s not the Marcos dictatorship alone that’s to blame. Nearly 20 years after Marcos fell, the elite cannot show substantial progress:the country’s institutions are weak, if not weaker; the foreign debt is ballooning and the country is falling into another debt trap;unemployment and poverty rates remain high; and the country is still racked with rebellion with one of the world’s longest-running communist insurgencies.

Why is the Philippine elite so irresponsible?

Well, compared to its Asian neighbors, the Philippine elite never felt really threatened by communism. South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia at one time or another faced “life and death” crisis fostered by the communist threat.

South Korea, which started out more backward than the industrialized North Korea, had no choice. Its military essentially told the business elite to behave, or else all of them would be overrun by the North Korean communists.

Fleeing the communists, the Kuomintang-led Chinese government settled in Taiwan. As outsiders to the island, the Kuomintang-led government could institute land reform and the ever-present threat of a Communist invasion forced its elite to become responsible.

Singapore was a tiny island with few resources and which faced a communist insurgency. Lee Kwan Yew and Singapore’s political elite battled back by building a strong bureaucracy and adopting many socialist elements (state ownership of key enterprises, socialized housing, etc.) while embracing foreign investments and free markets.

The same story was replicated in other countries like Malaysia,
Thailand and Indonesia. Their respective elites rose to the occasion and led their respective countries to wipe out poverty, strengthen public institutions and develop economically.

On the other hand, the Philippine elite became an anomaly and seemed to follow the Latin American model, unable and unwilling to lift the country out of its quagmire. Rather than acting as leaders, the Philippine elite, true to the rules of booty capitalism, acts more like pirates, preying on the state and the people.

One reason for this is that the Philippine elite felt secure under the protective umbrella of the United States. With the US bases, the Philippine elite could always count on the US military, or so it thought, to rescue it from the communist marauders.

The Laurel-Langley Agreement, which allowed US citizens to operate businesses in the Philippines as a foreign monopoly under high tariff walls, further cemented the symbiotic relationship between the US business elite and the local rent-seeking elite. The US and the Philippines became joined at the hip in weakening the state and promoting “booty capitalism.”

The need for the US to maintain its vital bases here during the Cold War made it also imperative that the Philippine elite be kept divided and unable to assert itself.

Why is it that years after the removal of the US bases and the end of the Cold War, the Philippine elite has retained its irresponsible ways? In fact, the Philippines seems to be replaying its history, with 2004 substituting for 1969. Like in 1969, right after the presidential election, the country is sitting on the edge of civil war, its public institutions are politicized, and its treasury nearly bankrupt.

One reason is what economists call the “economics of increasing returns.” Once a country is on a given path, positive feedback and increasing returns keep a country on the same path. If it’s necessary, for example, for an oligarch to bribe justices, it would be also necessary for the other oligarchs to engage in the same practice to compete, and a sort of an arms race to corrupt institutions develops.

As Hutchcroft puts it, “There has been little incentive for oligarchs themselves to press for a more predictable political order, because their major preoccupation is the need to gain or maintain favorable proximity to the political machinery. Even those oligarchs temporarily on the outs with of the regime exert far more effort in trying to get back into favor than in demanding profound structural change.”

Another reason why our elite is so irresponsible is that many of them shifted to regulated, service industries-banking, telecommunications, power, shipping, airline, etc.-in reaction to globalization. Thus, there was great incentive to the further weakening of the state and for “regulatory capture.”

The archipelagic nature of the country further insulates its elite and makes it oblivious of external threats. The communist threat from the North and competition with its old arch-rival, Japan, tempers the possible misbehavior and abuses of the South Korean elite. As for India, competition and rivalry with its neighbor Pakistan represents a motive force to develop the country.

No such rivalry or threat moderates the Philippine elite’s behavior.

Is there any hope then for the Philippines? Will the Philippine elite ever shape up?