Alternative Futures *

Planning alternative futures is a way of thinking and is a tool for planning. We imagine what might happen (possible future), a preferable future ( the future that we desire), what will happen ( plausible future), and probable future (more likely to happen). There is not just one future but many possible futures for if there were just one future, then, we are determining the future itself.

 Future thinking has always been part of human history and Futures Studies as a discipline uses the tools of science like Mathematics etc as tools in forecasting, for example, population growth and in trying to understand the big problems of the world.

 For our economic recession now, I am sure that we were not lacking in economic forecasts. What were needed, perhaps, were instruments to regulate the market and, more importantly, instruments to regulate “greed. ”

 I remember that in the late eighties, while I was doing development studies in Europe, we asked why the United States, if it was deficit spending already, did not have to undergo structural adjustment as prescribed by world financial institutions for poor countries.

 The answer we had at that time is that the United States has so much productive capacity. Anyway, with the failure of the financial and banking system at this juncture in time, nation states will have to find the fit between state regulation and free market or between protectionism and free trade.

There are many alternative futures for Mindanao. It was inspiring to hear our Mindanao & national leaders on ANC television in February 2009 as they invested themselves in re- imagining Mindanao.

One of the issues that caught my attention was whether economic development can be had in the meantime that peace is not yet at hand. Two decades ago, MINCODE, the coalition of NGO networks had already indicated in a policy paper the political, economic & socio-cultural road map to development in Mindanao. To be sure, all of the proposals will be a hurdle now amidst the economic recession now resonating deeply – in many ways- with nation states as well as with ordinary citizens. One of the constant themes in that MINCODE paper is that Mindanao is tri-people and multi-cultural.

Which is why, one of the panelists in that recent ANC TV special sponsored by the Asia Foundation and the embassy of Canada, remarked that these kind of conversations must also reflect the voice of the indigenous peoples in Mindanao. It was also noted that small or big victories in programs and projects of NGOs are not enough if these did not evolve into policies or in the case of the MOA-AD, if they do not fulfill the legal & constitutional requirements

The fate of the MOA-AD was a major piece in that ANC TV special coverage on Mindanao. Some of the lessons of that entire process leading to the non signing of the MOA-AD as described by Ms Irene Santiago, chair of the Mindanao Commission on Women, were a deficiency in tactical planning and this current administration’s lack of political capital and leadership to pave the way towards signing; the MOA-AD as a peace agreement should have been forged as an iconic event and putting as conditions the eventual passage of the legal and constitutional requirements, at some point.

 Looking back, yes, this is how the Tripoli agreement happened in 1976. Then in 1977, a Code of Muslim Personal Laws was passed which made possible the creation of Shari’a Courts in 1985. Much later, the 1996 peace agreement between the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation Front was also signed. All these instruments in 1977, 1985 and 1996 were based on the Tripoli agreement.

With the coming elections next year, now is a great time to draft those policy & legislative agendas needed for the proposed institutional arrangements for Mindanao.

* based on my column on the opinion page of the Mindanao Times on Feb 11, 2009 entitled Continuing Conversations on Mindanao

OF DINERS and BLEEDING HEARTS

When traveling abroad, should we be converting the cost of food to pesos? This is a constant debate that I have had with fellow Filipinos traveling abroad because we, ordinary mortals, get very violated disbursing foreign currencies and computing the equivalent in Philippine pesos. Our peso has really devalued over the years. One US dollar now is 48 times our one peso. The Great Britain Pound (GBP) is now 78 times our peso. The Euro is now 68 times over our peso. If the one million dinner worth at Le Cirque, New York were had in the early sixties, the peso equivalent would have been just P40,000 or if it happened in 1981, the cost would have been just 7 times over or P140, 000. Of course, in 1981, the average wage in the Philippines was about a thousand pesos a month or so. So, we, the bleeding hearts who are in solidarity and working with the poor really regard a million peso worth of dinner for 15 or 50 people as too much, anytime and anywhere under Philippine circumstances.

In the sixties, I read one such lavish party hosted by the patriarch Eugenio Lopez ( the scions have the same names plus Roman numerals.) It was the time when Fernando Lopez was the Vice President and the President was Ferdinand Marcos). That dinner party picture is still very vivid to me and it landed in the front pages of national newspapers, too, because champagne looked like it was flowing from a fountain that seemed to spring from a large pool in the garden. The news writers, then, quoted a provision in the Civil Code, “ Article 25. Thoughtless extravagance in expenses for pleasure or display during a period of acute public want or emergency may be stopped by order of the courts at the instance of any government or private charitable institution.”

A few weeks ago, while in England, I was invited to a working dinner in a not so expensive Italian restaurant and the fish meal was GBP 18 or Pesos 1,404. My total meal ( salad, fish and drinks) was Pesos 2,418. So, I thought to myself that the cost of my dinner is about one week’s work wage of the average worker in the Philippines now. As I was hoarding my pounds sterling so I could better spend them in the Philippines, my next meals, if it were to be paid by me, consisted of fish and chips and the like at GBP 5 or Php 390. One zone ride in the underground tube train is about Php 300. There are ways of saving though such as one day/one week train tickets or return tickets ( round trip tickets are cheaper than one way tickets because labor or service is expensive) To see a musical or a play at West End London ( where Miss Saigon was shown) costs more or less P10,000. So, I did not buy anything at all, except GBP 50 worth of seeds ( of summer plants) for planting in Bandera, the summer capital of the Island Garden City of Samal.

While entering the nurses’ lobby of a big hospital in London, I felt like I was in a Philippine hospital because almost all the allied medical professionals were Filipinos and the language was Filipino ( Tagalog & Binisaya). The drift of the conversation was about where their recent holidays were and when the next holidays will be and where. I said to myself that either they were missing home so much or most of them were just working for the wages that thoughts of holidays are a respite from the monotony of tasks in a workplace that is far from one’s homeland. So, our economy is still afloat because of these hard earned foreign currency that our fellow Filipinos get from working abroad. Never mind, that they are not able to dine in cost prohibitive fancy restaurants abroad because the bulk of their income is sent home so that their loved ones in the Philippines can keep body and soul together.

President Cory Aquino

Death ends a life but our memory of Cory Aquino lives on. Watching the confetti rained on Ayala Avenue, Makati, the Philippine financial district, with the sea of people saying goodbye to Cory feels like the mid eighties again.

My city, Davao, was also very much into the Cory campaign for President back in 1985. Davao City had its own yellow Fridays under the auspices of many Davao civic leaders and foremost to mind is Jesus V Ayala (JVA), who is one of the Cory staunchest supporters in Davao. JVA donated massive funding for our campaign for Cory and was the source of those yellow ribbons in Davao.

And so, the first city visited by Cory very soon after she became President in 1986 through people power was Davao City. It was at the then new Ecoland bus terminal. With umbrellas, we ignored the noon heat to listen to the new President of a free people. Cory was in blue dress and her presidential aura, which felt like divinely ordained, radiated through the crowd.

EDSA happened twenty three years (23) ago and so our children and especially the new voters need to be introduced to that era when the Filipino did the world proud by acting as a nation to reclaim our freedom and democracy.

One of those Cory events that is very well etched in my mind is the Cory speech before the joint session of the US Congress in Washington D.C. in September 18, 1986. The world watched as President Cory announced with so much pride how we regained freedom through the ways of democracy. Cory said in that famous speech before the US Congress “ In burying Ninoy, a whole nation honored him by that brave and selfless act of giving honor to a nation in shame recovered its own. A country that had lost faith in its future, founded in a faithless and brazen act of murder. So, in giving we receive, in losing we find, and out of defeat we snatched our victory. For the nation, Ninoy became the pleasing sacrifice that answered their prayers for freedom.”

This is like déjà vu because we are again uniting to honor and celebrate Cory who is our icon for democracy. Of course, there were problems in our country that Cory could not solve during her presidency like her failure or omission to make their own family landholding, the Hacienda Luisita a model for an agrarian reform arrangement. But, Cory did her best, as she said in her LAST State of the Nation Address before Congress in July 1991. Cory graciously dismounted from the center of power in 1991, yet she continues to inspire power and influence for the Filipino as a nation up to now.

Cory was the first woman president of Asia. In our trainings, in order to highlight what women can become, our great example is to say that a housewife can become president. The campaign then against her was to say she did not have experience in governance but the response was to say that Cory, the housewife, did not have experience in corruption and cheating. The gender equality provision enshrined in our 1987 Constitution happened during the Cory term which paved the way for the many succeeding laws implementing this charter provision such as the Women in Nation Building & Development Law, the law on Sexual Harassment, etc.

One particular law that I like to highlight ( on the occasion of the World Breastfeeding Week 2009 • 1-7 August 2009) which also happened during Cory’s term using her initial revolutionary powers is the law on milk and the marketing of breast milk substitutes. The lobby of the milk companies is, up to now, so powerful and so women’s groups promoting breastfeeding must monitor and protect mothers from the onslaught of television lies about milk nutrition that undermines breastfeeding. To highlight the impact of that signature of Cory, this executive order on milk that President Cory signed using her legislative revolutionary powers at that time made possible the writing of the promotion of breastfeeding in our Davao City Women Development Code which, in turn, is now instrumental for the breastfeeding centers in our malls, hospitals and conscientious workplaces. As we continue to protect our mothers from the unsubstantiated nutrition claims of milk companies that undermine breastfeeding, we remember that our tools for promotion of our continuing advocacy were made possible by the woman president in Cory Aquino. So, I will always remember Cory Aquino in every mother.

There is a memorial for Cory here in Davao City on August 5, Wednesday, at noon at the Ateneo de Davao Jacinto chapel. Wear yellow and please pass this message. ( email isabelita_solamo@yahoo.com )

Project Citizenship : Mar Roxas

Senator Mar Roxas was the only guest that showed up in the July 30, 2009 forum on Mindanao Peace, Economy, Environment & Youth Development. It was a forum under the auspices of the Project Citizenship of the Ateneo de Davao University ( particularly the Political Science & History program of the Social Science & Education Division and SAMAPULA, the organization of Political Science students ) and the Change Politics Movement. Other politicians such as Jejomar Binay, Grace Padaca, Francis Pangilinan, etc, who have individually expressed a desire to run for national posts were invited, too, but did not make it.

Mar Roxas said there is something to be said about those who show up and so I am giving space to him and hopefully, the rest who did not show up will have their space here another time. Senator Manuel "Mar" Araneta Roxas II was born May 13, 1957. He is the grandson of former Philippine President Manuel Roxas. Mar, an economist, is a product of the Ateneo de Manila for his basic education and studied Economics all the way at the Wharton School of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. Mar is very eloquent and spoke a handful without notes. He would pepper his speech with Binisaya Ilonggo as he served as a congressman from Capiz from 1993 to 2000 until former President Joseph Estrada appointed him as a cabinet member for the Department of Trade & Industry. Asked what the best thing Gloria Arroyo did, he said that it was re-appointing him as head of the Department of Trade & Industry.

Then, he was asked about what is great about the Liberal Party. He said that among the current crop of Liberal Party stalwarts, no one has been tainted with wrongdoing or corruption. I wish to share to the younger generation that perhaps, the reason why Mar says current Liberal party members is because the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1965 was once a prominent member of the Liberal Party founded by former Philippine President Manuel Roxas, and then Marcos became a turncoat after failing to get the Liberal Party's nomination for president. Marcos ran as the Nationalist Party candidate for president against the Liberal president, Diosdado Macapagal. Marcos won and was forced to step down twenty years after ( in 1986) when Cory took over as President after the EDSA people power revolution. Anyway, I felt even as a child back in 1965, that there were only two political parties : Liberal and Nacionalista. In local politics, though, delineation between what parties stood for was blurred as voters elected personalities or local kingpins and overlooked political parties. My sense is that it is still the same up to now which is really an indication for party building and for us citizens to invest ourselves in the discussion of political party platforms and national and local election issues.

Mar who is not topping but rising, though, in current presidential surveys was elected as Senator in the 2004 elections by 19, 372,888 votes and is still the highest ever garnered by a national candidate in Philippine election history.

The following are his answers to the rest of the issues :
a) On his expensive television commercials, i.e. the tricycle driver spiel, Mar says that the funds are his inheritance. While others would spend on expensive cars, he is choosing to spend his money communicating to the Filipino people.
b) On Mindanao peace : He is for peace but not carving another juridical entity out of the Philippines and that consultation on these issues are very crucial.
c) On reproductive health : he was asked how he would implement the Magna Carta of Women particularly reproductive rights: he said that definitely he is against abortion and to the students in the audience he said that providing information on reproductive health is important and that government should not impose or interfere on the couple’s decision on what is good for them in the area of reproductive health.

Many of my friends in Mindanao really took issue with the Mar Roxas stand on the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancentral Domain ( MOA-AD) particularly on the Bangsa Moro Juridical Entity (BJE). Perhaps, Mar as a politician, is also sensing the pulse of the larger majority and which is why communication and public awareness and consultations in planning alternative futures are crucial.

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.”