The Philippines Now A Year After The P-Noy Aquino Presidency

An analysis of the Philippine situation now should be at once social, economic and political.
Let me start with the economy as it is the infrastructure of society according to still relevant classic sociologists.

 Aquinomics, according to economist Cielito Habito can be summarized into two & I quote,
“economics of business confidence and economics of fiscal responsibility.”

 As explained by C. Habito, the Philippines posted a growth in private domestic investment from zero in 2002-2007 to 37% now, with a corresponding drop in foreign direct investments and local government spending. The growth from investments is from the private sector and across all sectors, urban and rural, including the farming sector. The explanation for the drop in foreign investments is the U.S. flat economy and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

These two economies are our biggest foreign investors. Still, the increase in domestic private investment is a positive one. The “economics of fiscal responsibility,” accordingly is our budget surplus or under spending in government construction, for instance, which at first glance would mean a low absorbent capacity of this administration but not so because the 2011 budget was made by the Arroyo administration as the P-Noy crafted budget begins in 2012 yet.

 Last year registered the creation of about half a million jobs from the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Industry which also registered a U.S $9 billion Philippine income from the services sector. According to Ms. Marife Zamora, Philippine country manager of Convergys, there is still a lack of qualified human resources in this field who are good in English, computer savvy and logical thinkers.
 Still, about eleven (11) million Filipinos are still unemployed.

 On the political front, during the year, we have been a recipient of advisories against travel to the Philippines by foreign countries. The Manila Hostage Crisis became a symbol of sorts of the incompetence of our chain of command to handle a crime situation involving foreigners as victims.

That the tourism sector is into a “re-branding” of the Philippines is of positive note.

 Politics is mainly the stuff of our three branches of government.
According to P-Noy himself, the chief achievement of his administration, so far, is his policy of good governance and the restoration of public trust.
But, perhaps the snail pace pursuit of this “Ang Daang Matuwid,” may have been responsible for P-Noy’s drop in his net satisfaction rating by the SWS polling operation from a high of +64 in November 2010 to a low of +46 in June 3-6, 2011.

 Various committees in Congress are into investigations galore in aid of legislation : to name a few, the fertilizer scam, AFP scam, and lately the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes scam involving the clergy.

 The pillars of our justice system have not been able to resolve both old and new heinous crimes : Ninoy Aquino murder, Visconde massacre, Dacer-Corbito, Maguindanao massacre, etc.

 Last, but certainly, not least is the social services sector.

For women, the lingering delay in the passage of the Reproductive health bill is the ultimate test of the impotence of the lawmaking & policy making branches of our government. This is also a commentary on the failure of the P-Noy administration to muster political support for this piece of legislation from various political parties in Congress.

 That we are the last nation - state in this post modern world that does not have divorce for the majority speaks a million words of indictment of how feudal our leaders in position of power and authority are.

 As someone, who personally heard direct testimonies of about a hundred empowered parent leaders of the Pantawid sa Pamilya Pilipino Program or the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, I am adopting the view that this centerpiece program of the PNoy Administration is an investment in human resources to arrest poverty of the poorest of the poor of the current generation so that these children now in school will take care of the next generation.

Random Reflections on Holy Holidays

My holy week started with preparations to send off Kaye, mi unica hija for work in Manila.
Now, I am coping with what is called the empty nest syndrome or the feeling that parents experience when a child leaves home to study or work.
The feelings are both sadness and joy not unlike the sadness and joy of the holy season.
The sadness is akin to that of a post partum depression or when a long drawn out project is over.
The joy is the empathy for the excitement of a child turned adult who is trying on “life’s uniforms” and infinite possibilities away from our smothering and overprotection.

My apprehension is probably due to the fact that the Manila that I knew is not the same anymore. Manila has deteriorated so much over the years.
The floods come every year like clockwork; the face of the flood is etched in our minds as the ONDOY flood. My other fear is that much of Manila sits on an earthquake belt. So, I “ Eat, Pray and Love.” Seriously, I told my daughter to eat healthy and have faith. We both believe in the credo that faith is a lot like love and hope.

During the holy week, we hope to have respite from all the bombardment through television of all that is bad in Philippine politics.
After all the House and Senate hearings on corruption in aid of legislation, our government leaders must reflect now on the goals of our government spending.
Subsidies are crucial for our agrarian sector. Public spending on our human resources through education is an important investment.

As to revenue generation through taxes, that our government is paying attention to tax evasion by people from the center of wealth & power is an iconic gesture that should send a strong message to correctly establish the ideal relationship between the government and the citizen taxpayer.
As the saying goes, death and taxes are the only two things certain in life.

In history, we remember our heroes and activist forefathers and mothers who campaigned against “taxation without representation.”
Still, it is inefficient to collect taxes from the poor.
It is inefficient as the cost of collection is high because the taxable units are small.
The poor are our farmers and fisherfolks in the agrarian sector whose incomes are seasonal or our urban poor whose incomes are unstable.

Then, while my daughter and I were looking at the range of work options in Manila, I discover that the friends I went to school with or worked with are now the rulers and leaders of the land as cabinet members or the leaders in the President’s team, congresswomen and men, solicitor general, Justices, Comelec Directors, Deans of universities, or heads of social, economic and political institutions of our country.
So, I feel the faith again.
We, together with these leaders that we know so very well are directly responsible for the social, economic and political prognosis of the Philippine Republic.
For me, this feels like a renaissance and the renewal of Easter that I am looking forward to.

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.

An Island in the Pacific

My domicile is a beautiful island even if I have also built a home in Davao City.
The Island Garden City of Samal in the Philippines is very accessible from mainland Mindanao and I imagine that in the future, if or when we become a federal state, it will be part of the state of Davao.
For now, Samal City is a component city of the province of Davao del Norte. 

There is evidence that Samal Island is very old, even if the island became a city, by law, only in 1998. 
The island used to be composed of two towns (Samal & Babak) then later, a law further subdivided the island into 3 towns with Kaputi-an as another town. 
Which is why, whoever it was who coined the acronym IGACOS to refer to the island garden city is not doing justice by “layering” the very old name Samal which is also the name of the oldest tribe in the island.

Recently, I was speaker in one of the alumni homecomings in the island and I talked about the concept of pride of place to inspire my friends.
Under the light of a full moon, I told my audience that when I wanted to feel rich, I tell myself that I own the skies, sun, sand, seas and the mountains.
I go out of my way to meditate in one of the island’s highest point overlooking the entire Davao Gulf. But, that, also in these flat economic times, it is very easy to have fun and make money at the same time.
In this month of May, the month of flowers, I planted hundreds of various kinds of Hibiscus or locally known as Gumamela and they are ready for sale when they bloom in August, the month of the celebration of harvests in Samal City.

Also, prime time television put Samal Island again in nationwide consciousness when TV sportscaster Dyann Castillejo featured the beautiful Hagimit Falls and beaches and resort facilities.
The source of the falls is a rainfed deeply indented cavernous land formation and the water passes through a seemingly underground unexplored river that surfaces as a waterfall along its way to lower ground.
The land use plan of the island allocates only about 8.5 per cent of its total lands to forest land use. So, if the island values its water system as a potential investment, it must reconsider its large agricultural land use ( 82.5%) and convert it to agroforestry land use in order to increase the island’s forest cover and thus preserve its rivers, lakes and waterfalls.
These inland attractions complement the island’s pristine beaches.
The advantage of Samal compared to Boracay is that it is very near an international airport and as well, the island hopes not to repeat the mistakes of congested Boracay.

The island is teeming with peoples organization: about 60 organizations in an island with a population of more than 82,000 in 46 barangays.
The women in 46 barangays are members of a citywide council of women. In this sense, the social capital to campaign for free and honest elections in the island has always been promising.

Samal City has a women’s center partly built through with funds under the initiative of our political party Abanse! Pinay under the countrywide development funds program.
The focus of the women’s center is economic enterprise and is a rallying point of the members of the Women’s Council of Women.
But, there are also some cases of violence committed against some of the women in the island and Samal City, for now, has had to bring one of these cases to Davao City’s DSWD ( Dept of Social Welfare & Development) facility because the island city does not yet have a shelter for battered women.

Change Politics in the Philippines for 2010 Elections

May 10, 2009, exactly one year before the 2010 elections, was greeted by civil society, artists and media outfits by gathering people from all walks of life and engaging in meaningful discussions on how to reclaim politics from lesser politicians who are not able to do justice to good governance in our beloved nation.

One of the movements in the Philippines is called the Change Politics Movement ( CPM) which came on the heels of various national and regional meetings to discuss the state of our nation’s governance. Our movement was launched simultaneously last Sunday, May 10 in the national capital region & various cities in the Philippines ( Cagayan de Oro, Butuan City, Iloilo, Dumaguete, Cebu, Ormoc, Samar, & Naga). The ration d’etre of this movement is to organize a critical mass of citizens towards choosing and actively campaigning for a common slate of national candidates for the 2010 elections who will be accountable as public servants and who will bring about the much needed reforms to our government and nation. The movement is determined to give birth to an active citizenry and to make politics “ the sacred covenant that is meant to be – between the leaders and the constituencies.”

In my city, Davao City, the launching of the Change Politics Movement at the student lounge of the Holy Cross of Davao College was graced by more than 250 women and men from Southern Mindanao: from Davao City, Samal City, Compostela Valley, Davao del Norte & Davao Oriental. Through national video conferencing, reports and results of the various workshops in different parts of the country were shared among all of us from different locations. The national discussions sought to determine the criteria for selecting who will be the presidential candidate of the movement. In a national video conferencing, a consensus was reached on the criteria and these included integrity and track record which is defined as character & credibility, competence, leadership and politics and the candidate’s position taken on issues such as poverty reduction, corruption, human rights, peace, agrarian reform, the environment, etc. Another important set of criteria that came out in the movement’s national video conference last Sunday was about the strategic issues that the next president should immediately address :

A) to immediately stop the plunder of the public coffers
B) to rebuild and strengthen democratic institutions
C) to raise sufficient resources & ensure proper allocation & spending of public resources for priority programs
D) to raise productivity ( especially in rural areas) & ensure fair distribution of assets of production, benefits and public funds
E) to ensure social protection for the poorest and disadvantaged communities
F) to set the foundation for restoring the peace track with armed parties

The presidential candidate to be chosen must have capacity to win and seriously engage in the electoral contest for the highest post in the land : whether such candidate has a level of public recognition on a national scale; if there is an actual & potential extent of support constituency; access to or capacity to raise funds; actual presence of organized support and machinery in different parts of the country and whether the candidate has alliances who also believe in reform and change politics.

All members of the Change Politics Movement will choose the Philippine presidential candidate and the entire slate of national candidates on August 8, 2009.