The Arroyo Last State of the Nation Address

I like to rapporteur & so let me compile the various comments on President Gloria Macapagal - Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address ( SONA) before Congress.

The comments on various blogs are voluminous.

On the day of the SONA, the “tweeting information highway” was so full.
In this year’s SONA, President Arroyo, outlined her achievements since 2001 and as well discussed her priority programs and legislative agenda.
Reading her lips, most said that she did not make a categorical remark about her plans after her term ends in 2010.
And anyway, even if she did, people will always remember the Rizal Day remark that she will not seek re-election but ran anyway in 2004 for President again.
Since, we are into memory lane mode, I remember that in year 2000, when everyone was calling for the ouster of President Estrada, then Vice President Gloria took time in joining the ouster call until after two years into the term of then President Estrada or two years after 1998.

The explanation of some political analysts were that the following constitutional provision may have been taken into account “ No person who has succeeded as President and has served as such for more than four years shall be qualified for election to the same office at any time. “

And so, it seems, that even as early as year 2000, there was legal planning towards 2010.

In the seventies, during the debates on how long a president of a country should serve, we said, four years is too short for a good president while six years is too long for a bad president.

In 2010, President Gloria will have served as President for ten years already.
The clarion call of the Change Politics Movement, Tindignation and many others who staged protest rallies all over the country is that this should be Gloria Arroyo’s last SONA and for her to dismount at the end of her term, pave the way for the 2010 elections and to say NO to charter change moves via a constituent assembly at this juncture in time.

President Gloria said "Governance is not about looking back and getting even. It is about looking forward and giving more--to the people who gave us the greatest, hardest gift of all: the leadership of a country, the care of a nation.”
Some commentators took issue with this because, accordingly, one must be accountable for one’s actions because, otherwise, we will be promoting impunity.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) President and Jaro Archbishop Angel N. Lagdameo said that the many achievements mentioned were the work of many people in the bureaucracy and as such all in the governance sector must also take responsibility for all our failures.

The Manolo Quezon blog summarized the SONA in three brief sentences which generated various comments : A) Don’t count me out. B) Cha-Cha is a go. C)
We will mobilize vs. certain presidential candidates.

President Arroyo also mentioned that during her father’s watch as President, the Philippines was second to Japan in economic performance.
How do we reclaim that performance?
Admitted, our gross domestic product grew during President Arroyo’s term, but we also judge our economic growth by the way our neighbors are performing.
Most of all, that reported growth is not trickling down yet.
Still, we remain hopeful as ever.
Even the feisty Senator Francis Escudero, who also hoped that Arroyo said goodbye already in her last line, agrees with the following proposals of President Arroyo:
"condonation of 42 billion pesos in obligations of CARP beneficiaries;
continuation of the hunger mitigation program;
concentrating on revenue collection efficiency;
a knowledge-based economy as the way of the future; and, exploring the settlement of conflicts via talks instead of bullets, with exception of terrorists.”

Finally, our manifesto as ordinary citizens should be to feel some responsibility for all the ills of our nation and as such we must continue to share our bit of contribution towards the achievement of our goals as a nation.
Describing our problems and doing something about them are big steps already.

The Changing Economic Landscape & the Philippines

The ideas that I am sharing here now are still inspired by the conversations and papers presented at my alumni reunion at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in Great Britain. One of the big topics tackled is the changing economic landscape and we kept referring to the old world starting the year 1492, because as Tom Lines, an expert on trade & development, who was one of the keynote speakers at the opening of the 2009 IDS Alumni Reunion said in his concluding remarks, “ My final, final thought is about the very widest landscape, and the extent of the hegemony crisis we might be facing. The banking crash of 2008 may well mark as big a turning point in world history as 1492, the year of Columbus’ first voyage to America. This symbolically marked the start of 500 years in which European countries, and their offshoots like the US, dominated the world….”
Should the United States undergo structural adjustment, as we know it, since it is now the biggest debtor nation in the world? Perhaps, the conditions or prescriptions of the U.S. government to huge banks and financial institutions that it bailed –out and the reforms in the education and health sectors are some forms of structural adjustments to cushion the impact of the crisis. In the so called Third World Debt Crisis of 1982, countries in debt like Mexico, the Philippines and the others have had to undergo structural adjustment ( read : import liberalization and shift to an export oriented economy). Obviously, for the Philippines, these prescriptions are not working. On cursory examination, one difference is that the Philippines is a democratic country ( at least in tradition or policy) while the emerging successful markets in East Asia like China, Singapore, South Korea or the tiger economies are more authoritarian nation states or state–controlled economies.
Some economists have labeled the global economic crisis, which started in 2007 in the United States as the “First World Debt Crisis.” Describing vividly our changing landscape, let me quote Tom Lines again,

….” The broader policy conclusion is also opposed to that of the 1980s Debt Crisis: not that free market policies must be pursued but that this crisis demonstrates their failure, so more regulation and a bigger role for government will be needed…. Now the US is the biggest debtor nation. Its capacity for economic hegemony has ended. Of the biggest creditors, only one (Germany) is part of the tradition which grew out of Europe. The others are China, Japan, Brazil, India and Russia (which is only partly European and lies outside that tradition for its own historical reasons). By far the biggest creditor is China: an up-and-coming country, self-sufficient and inward-looking (although hardly young), and unwilling to take on a dominant role at present. One thing is clear: whatever power relations may finally emerge, the previous Core: Periphery arrangement has been upset, probably for ever…. If the US no longer has the economic power to control things, and that power is moving to China or Japan or India, it marks a far bigger cultural shift than that of the 20th Century from one English-speaking, Common Law country (the UK) to another (the US). Power relations are indeed changing, but in view of the horrific events in Europe between 1914 and 1945 it leaves me with some apprehension about where this crisis might lead before a new settlement is reached. “
As we say, the shortest distance to trading with the new emerging economies like China is language, to start with. Mandarin, Fookien, Cantonese will be the new chic languages. We will have to get used to yuan, China’s currency which up to now most of us have not used. It helps that Filipinos, and most everyone in the world, are already into things Chinese. There is a Chinatown in virtually all cities of the world. We just wish that events such as Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 which culminated in the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre and all the human rights violations allegedly associated with it are not part of our future. It is a tribute to Asian human rights defenders under the auspices of our regional organization Forum-Asia that they are crafting a human rights mechanism to parallel the crafting of the Asean human rights mechanisms at the ASEAN. The other important proposed reform is a regional United Nations in this part of the world because the United Nations which was born in the wake of the Second World War was precisely created so that we will never again have to have a repeat of the untold sorrows of world wars.

What The World Needs Now : Notes From England

England - I am here for my alumni reunion at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex.

 IDS “aims to understand and explain the world, and to try to change it- to influence as well as to inform.”

In this two day meeting, the alumni are scholarly articulating the problems of the world and plotting what development work needs to be done in a changing landscape and shifting geopolitics.

One of the major theses that needs to be communicated is that reduction of so much inequality should be done with or without the global economic crisis.

Among others, the global economic crisis is a failure of the banking and financial systems and so one proposal is not to deal with the economic crisis because to spend much time in terms of more research to produce more knowledge for something that has happened already will be derailing in many ways.
The lessons of the global economic crisis speak for themselves or to wax Latin :Res ipsa loquitor.

This call is to let the economic crisis evolve and hope it will metamorphose into a less virulent strain.
 It is more efficient to focus on something that is sure to change the world and that is to work on instruments towards reducing inequality without excluding the importance of economic growth.

The alumni are poised to embark on a project that believes that reducing inequality can be one of the solutions to the global economic crisis.
This 2009 crisis is a crisis at the core ( rich) affecting both core and periphery (poor.)
 Hubert Schmitz, IDS research fellow working on globalization, thinks that to concentrate work on the poor countries is limiting because “ concentrating on the dependent variable ‘poverty’ would cut off from understanding the dynamics which leads to shifts in poverty and prosperity.”
In short, former poor countries in East Asia which are now the so called emerging markets are driving the changes in the center.

Definitely, we need a new language or discourse or paradigm or new conversations to describe the changing development landscape.
In these uncertain times, the task is to ask the right question.
It was noted that in our management of these uncertain financial times, some of the myriad of responses are mistaken views to go exclusively global or focus exclusively on the local when the response should be integrating both the global and local.
There is a disconnect between macro and micro economics and the task is to articulate the discourse between the macro and micro or to find the middle space between the big picture and the small picture.

There is no one shared view on development perspectives.
Development policies are most often influenced by voices from positions of power and authority.
Which is why in this age of mobile phones and internet connection, it is important to hear different perspectives or to hear our own local stories of what we think the changes should be.

Making the world a better place is not a monopoly of development experts.
One challenge put forward by Professor Lawrence Haddad, head of the Institute of Development Studies is how to successfully collaborate with other voices such as the private sector, or the great majority who are very connected via information technology who are “just getting on with their work and who are not too bothered whether the self designated development experts work with them or not.”


https://www.flickr.com/photos/ids_uk/sets/72157621859137086
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ids_uk/sets/72157621859137086/

Let me share a feedback about the above piece ( What The World Needs Now)  from an economist  in Wall Street, New York  who studied at the Wharton School of business on the ailing economy of the United States :

“The US condition does not keep me awake at night, but it disturbs me...Great powers of course in most cases, do not instantly collapse (though Russia quickly unraveled not too long ago).  They tend to linger, remain relatively wealthy, though with less influence in the world.

The US dollar does bother me...It is a matter of time as to when it will experience a big decline...There might be like a sand pile phenomenon...you never know when the last grain of sand will cause the sand pile to collapse.

China will never flex its global powers until it has too.  I think it operates consistent with my view:  one should not make unnecessary enemies.  Messianic powers (e.g. US) often do...and they get conflicted between their self-interest and their messianic goals of imposing freedom and democracy.”