My column yesterday was Charisma versus routines, which is a further attempt to explore themes I began exploring in this blog on December 9, in Charismatic expectations in noncharismatic times.
It will take some time before The Explainer on ANC blog will upload the full script, but many thanks to Torn & Frayed for his kind words and for sharing his thoughts my last episode, with Federico Macaranas as the guest.
Below is reproduced the chapter I wrote for the book In Pursuit of the Philippine Competitive Edge: An Oral History of a Continuing Journey by 50 wisdom-keepers, which touches on some of the points Torn raised in his entry.
The perpetual avoidance of opportunity
Manuel L. Quezon III
(From In Pursuit of the Philippine Competitive Edge: An Oral History of a Continuing Journey by 50 wisdom-keepers, AIM Policy Center, 2007).IN 1953, the Philippines Free Press published an editorial in which it observed that “The need to establish a regime above personalities, a government of law instead of men, cannot be exaggerated. In a rule of law alone lies social stability. Those who are for chaos may welcome a personal regime; those who are for order know the need for an impersonal government.” It said that while notable Filipino leaders in the past had a “private conscience drew the line beyond which it would be dishonorable for a public official to go,” the country couldn’t continue pinning its hopes on officials privately drawing “a line which only an impersonal law should draw.” The editorial writer couldn’t know how prophetic he was being.
That year, Ramon Magsaysay was elected in a landslide not seen in Philippine politics since before World War II; such was the charisma and integrity of the man that he almost single-handedly rejuvenated public confidence in government. But by 1957 Magsaysay was dead; and the country was left with the painful realization the editorial writer had expressed three years before: in the absence of a genuine rule of law, the restoration of public confidence was an impossible task.
By 1962, the Philippines had begun the decline that it continues to experience to this day. The decline has, at times, accelerated; at other times, it has slowed to the extent that it offered up hopes, though always dashed, of reversing that decline. And yet the decline has been inexorable: due to an inability, often bordering on an obstinate refusal, to embrace modernity. Because of that, the foundations of a cohesive, progressive, society -a sense of national solidarity arising from confidence in the law, and in government’s ability to mediate contending sectoral interests- has been absent.
Politics and government are all about competition -and competitiveness. The manner in which leaders and followers choose to compete, and the methods they adapt and permit to either foster, or stifle, competition, are reflections of the larger competitive abilities of society. The Philippine experience in the fifty years that the country has been said to be have been declining, has been that of a society’s refusal to compete.
NATIONAL solidarity, already brittle prior to World War II, fractured over the question of resistance to the Japanese and alliance with the United States. The national leadership prior to the war had been extremely attentive, and thus derived a strong legitimacy, to a limited electorate. The late 1930s had witnessed developments that had already begun to weaken the relationship between leaders and followers: the introduction of women’s suffrage in 1937; the gradual extension of suffrage from the propertied that had a monopoly on the vote prior to that point, thus increasingly injecting populism as a means of attracting the masses; an increasingly cosmopolitan, and radical, intelligentsia; and the impatience of young leaders to wrest political control from the leaders that had dominated government for forty years.
What emerged as the official response to these trends was a series of constitutional amendments approved in 1940: the restoration of a bicameral congress to replace the unicameral National Assembly, in order to forestall the radical infiltration of the legislature being foremost among them (just how inevitable this was going to be would only be demonstrated after the war, with the election of peasant leaders to represent certain districts in Central Luzon: the Roxas administration had to embark on evicting these leaders from their congressional seats). Bloc voting was introduced, both to enforce party discipline and as a means for ensuring dominant coalition control, which would also be fostered by institutionalizing a Commission on Elections, whose rules strongly favored the interests of the dominant coalition.
The carnage and virtual civil war that was the Philippine experience during the war not only laid waste to the country’s physical infrastructure, but took an enormous toll on the country’s leadership, young and old. The veneer of unity and statesmanship carefully-nurtured for forty years was stripped away by questions of collaboration with the Japanese and the struggles within the guerrilla movement.
In this book, Gerardo Sicat argues that “when we began as a new republic, we were on a competitive footing with the rest of Asia and the world. We had good resources and human resources. We had then the prospect of building a good future because we had financial resources, despite the destruction caused by the war.” But maximizing those resources required a sense of national purpose fostered by cooperation. Neither would be particularly evident in the postwar years: or to be precise, a divided national leadership made the effort; that effort, however, was hampered by developments already foreseen prior to the war, but accelerated by the trauma of the war: too many had had their faith in the leadership shaken, too many had operated in an atmosphere of lawlessness and unpredictability, to be satisfied with the restoration of the antebellum order.
And the onset of independence in 1946 also marked an unrecognized but important development.
The prewar elite, from that date, actually retreated; its ranks decimated, and displaced politically, it ensured its primacy in commerce through a kind of elaborate protectionist racket: since politico and businessman now increasingly came from different worlds, the camaraderie and common affectations of gentility of prewar days was untenable. Politicians gladly alternated between outright extortion and (increasingly) indiscreetly being on retainer to financial interests to fuel their campaigns; the old elite, still firmly entrenched in business, demanded protectionist policies in turn to protect their monopolies.
STILL, from the 40s to the late 50s enough of the pre-war political leadership survived to give the impression that pre-war solidarity had not only survived, but been rebuilt; but this was a case of old assumptions artificially supported by nostalgia and the old generation’s believing its own propaganda.
But with Magsaysay this all came clearly to an end: the old parties built on generations-old networks of leaders had been supplanted by his strategy of barnstorming and media manipulation. His election had been as much a referendum on the old ruling class as it was a validation of the vitality of a new generation. The means for political control and continuity put in place during the Commonwealth were systematically dismantled: bloc voting abolished; the power of the president to appoint mayors taken away; celebrity politics introduced (signaled, for example, by the election of matinee idol Rogelio de la Rosa to the Senate) and with it, the unstoppable transformation of both the standards expected of candidates by the electorate, and the manner in which candidates courted voters.
The Last Hurrah of the old cozy relationship between the politicians and businessmen was the Garcia administration: its election as the first plurality, and not majority, presidency in Philippine history again served as a harbinger of the fatally-divided and unresponsive political culture familiar to Filipinos today.
The Garcia government, however, nationalist as it was, presented an increasingly clear picture of an elite stripped of actual political power, but canny enough to continue fostering and pandering to a new grasping class, the guerrilla generation with its warlord inclinations. Macapagal’s election was the final repudiation of the prewar leadership, but his attempts at modernizing the political system foundered due to a combination of his own authoritarian instincts and his inability to counter the cunning of his opponents. They marshaled a coalition of landowners antagonized by talk of land reform, financial interests hostile to liberalizing the economy, and the guerrilla generation contemptuous of the New Era’s prewar pretenses to class.
WHEN Ferdinand Marcos, exemplar of that grasping class, came to power, he knew that the ruling class’s control of politics was fiction, and that armed with the populism and anti-elitism of the Magsaysay era, he could preside over the liquidation, socially, financially, and politically, of that class; he could, in turn, appropriate the Marxism of the youth more successfully than Macapagal ever could; he could turn it, at least, into a weapon to frighten his generation into supporting him in waging war not only against the Old Society, but the New Generation rallying in the streets. There was simply no line, written or unwritten, that he would not cross.
By the Marcos years, a middle class born in the American period had matured; educated and trained in the style of the ruling class, it shared many of that class’s biases and even pretensions. Among them was the illusion that it was the successor to the old landed and industrial families. They were not; they remained employees: the managers and directors comfortable in the new suburbs designed in imitation of the suburban communities of their bosses. They had homes, their children went to college, but in those colleges their children increasingly asked impertinent questions. Their reaction to impertinent questions and demonstrations was to express solidarity with the alarmed political and business leadership: after all, even as students established the Diliman commune, solidly middle-class residents of the vicinity established vigilante groups to assist the constabulary in flushing the rebels out.
FERDINAND Marcos mounted a coup after efforts to buy the 1971 Constitutional Convention failed; he was pleasantly relieved to discover that the country, on the whole, welcomed his “constitutional authoritarianism.” Democracy had proven to unpredictable; dictatorship was a more palatable approach, mirroring the preferred way for handling problems of the propertied and influential. It was, in more ways than anyone could imagine at the time, a deal with the devil.
Dictatorship demands conformity and conformity kills innovation. The systematic plunder of the country by Marcos and his cronies stripped the Old Society of its finances and thus, its political means; next came the looting of everything else. The middle class discovered itself defenseless, and without a champion in government: with the disgruntled old oligarchy it rebelled but lost to the old oligarchy as it, in turn, proceeded to loot the post-Edsa democracy to compensate itself for the losses of the martial law years.
The middle class, disheartened and disillusioned, clinging as it had to the romantic notion it represented something noble together with the old oligarchy, fled the country (and is now virtually absent from the scene). What’s left of it attempted its own Last Hurrah with Edsa Two, only to discover it was fatally divided over a residual romanticism towards politics, and the adoption of the Marcosian grasping class’s attitudes towards government. A society growing exponentially, and increasingly unexposed to the old institutional controls of education, religion, and civic organization, in turn has reduced the political, business, and middle classes to even more of a minority status, and thus even more fiercely dependent on the military as its protector and enforcer than even the Marcos government was.
TWO gentlemen in this book, one identified as having tried to mitigate the excesses of the Marcos years, and the other an eminent voice since the Edsa Revolution, have succinctly summarized the political call of the times. Former Prime Minister Virata said, “We need the concentration, we have to develop more other areas, we have to complete the communities.” For the Philippines has lost its sense of national unity, or feelings of solidarity, which serve to moderate the winner-take-all nature of politics and governance.
And Jesus Estanislao points to the perpetual failure of the country’s leadership to institute the real rule of law, and thus genuine modernity -and by extension, authentic competitiveness- when he asked, “The prospect depends on many Filipinos are willing to take up the cudgels for deep genuine reforms. This is where we begin thinking: ‘Where will these reforms come from?’ Reforms always come from a set of individuals who see the future or wanting to change or committed to doing something, and I think it can be done.”
But for it to be done requires an appreciation of the past; and how each time the country has been confronted with an opportunity to institute change, it has shrunk from the task.
The Philippines since 1962, faced several choices, each of which presented the opportunity to expand democracy, integrate the formerly marginalized into the body politic, and rejuvenate public confidence in its political institutions. Instead, protectionism, not just economic, but political, was the preferred choice. The 1971 Constitutional Convention ended up pandering to a dictatorship that sent an entire generation of Filipino professionals, stifled by the dictatorship, into exile; an entire political generation was deprived of power until it came to geriatric and greedy power in 1987, in a sense triggering a second exodus as devastating as that of the 70s: the middle class exodus from the 90s to the present.
A new Philippines, it must be said, is being born. Together with the academic and professional elite that migrated in the 70s went Filipinos of modest means who have only begun to establish themselves as a new, entirely different, middle class. Their influence in politics is only beginning to be felt, not in Metro Manila, but in the provinces. The increasingly cosmopolitan and entrepreneurial nature of such Filipinos is, at present, inspiring yet another effort to hold change at bay. It is a confusing, chaotic, even dangerous situation. But proof positive that the lost opportunities of the past needn’t represent an eternal regret, but only a means for reflection in order to more firmly, and daringly, embrace the future.
Bibliographic note
My thoughts on the trends in Philippine society were initially developed in two essays: “Elections are like Water,” and “Circle to Circle”, in i-Magazine (2004). The Free Press editorial, “Politics: Means and End” from August 29, 1953, has also influenced me greatly.
The relationship between Filipino politicians and businessmen is best explored in Amando Doronila’s The State, Economic Transformation, and Political Change in the Philippines, 1946-1972 and in Nick Cullather’s Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States-Philippine Relations, 1942-1960. Controversial and debatable though many of his assertions are, Lew Gleeck’s President Marcos and the Philippine Political Culture also makes for informative reading.
An over-reliance on the (at the time) trailblazing ideas and scholarship of Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino is, to my mind, unhealthy. State and Society in the Philippines by Patricio Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso incorporates the tremendous advances in thinking and scholarship in the four decades since, and makes for indispensable reading, particularly in exploring the evolution of the Philippine state.
Technorati Tags: Blogging, books, history, ideas, philippines, politics, president, society
MLQ,
I think it’s not that we refuse to compete rather it’s that we compete over the wrong things.
I agree that 1962 was a pivotal year for us, but i’d expect you’d be hearing from Bencard.
We have come full circle in this aspect. Now the current powers want to restore the unicameral national Assembly to forestall the radical infiltration of the legislature [by the people].
Sayang talaga. Our neighbors which allowed their left-leaning politicians to take power (e.g. Park Chung Hee, Lee Kuan Yew), and these politicians turned out to be pragmatic enough to implement effective programs for economic development. Over here, we marginalized (and still demonize) the Left such that they haven’t been able to take their turn at governance. Mar Roxas has a historic obligation to correct what his father has done.
I’m a bit confused with this passage. Does this mean that the entrepreneurial efforts of the new middle class is a way to preserve the status quo? What is the change that they want to hold at bay?
cjv, harry lee and gen. park left-leaning?????
an argument could be made that indonesia, malaysia, singapore, south korea, thailand, etc. all accomplished what we couldn’t -eliminate communism entirely. or, we had an alternative path, which was to open up, slowly, the political sphere to radicals, but we didn’t pursue that either, so we achieved the worst of both words: attempts at suppression without actually accomplishing it.
as for your question, when you divorce entrepreneurship/business from larger reforms, you close off the avenue of political change, as dangerous, because destabilizing. therefore you help foster an amoral business environment. the same reason bankers and businessmen admire the political will of expanded vat, while ignoring why that will had to be exercised to compensate for politics-as-usual.
Thanks for the explanation Manolo, that was enlightening! From what i read, LKY and Park were left-leaning during their younger years (not unlike our very own DJB).
For our neighbors, decolonization was a blessing because they were able to pursue their own paths to development. Their radical leaders eventually learned to be pragmatic and stumbled on an appropriate mix of policies for their own countries. We were granted independence but with strings by the Americans so we did not have the same flexibility and opportunity for renewal.
cjv, every country that negotiates independence does so with strings attached. and those that achieve it unilaterally can take on strings as binding to those that helped them achieve it (cam ranh bay for the soviets in vietnam).
mlq3, Of course, the strings are to be expected but as to what kind of strings are to be allowed to be attached is another matter and it shows what kind of leaders a country has or what the leaders’ priorities are.
In our case, was there even an effort to negotiate for full independence without strings attached or did our leaders readily give in to the strings our dear US of A demanded to be attached to our independence so long as the government is held by Filipinos?
beancurd, you’d have to see the joint preparatory committee for independence negotiations in 1937-38 i believe, the negotiations during the war over naval and air bases, and the negotiations after the war over parity and the bases. certainly, the effort was there and quite vigorous, at least prewar, when we could negotiate from a stronger position.
even the roxas negotiations actually could be argued were on the basis of a gamble -except the basis for the gamble suddenly changed with the onset of the cold war. the negotiations for parity, etc. were based on an understanding of american objectives and interests as of 1945-46, but the creation of the national security state by 1947 in the usa radically changed american goals, and how they’d be applied -we discovered we were second-tier and shut out. this is where the roxas gamble failed.
this contemporary article gives an idea of prewar discussions on the subject:
http://philippinesfreepress.wordpress.com/2006/11/06/primer-on-the-plebiscite-october-21-1939/
Mlq3: So is one of the key conclusions — we have seen the enemy, and it is our parents?
up n student: the reverse, actually.
While finding out culpability (and meting of punishment on) the older generation, probably more important is to determine the next action items. The flight to overseas will continue, because OFW-ism is a legitimate response to the predicament.
It bears repeating the wisdom of the need for rule of law. My undertanding is that rule of law is NOT “… so GMA most probably the law, therefore Trillanes can definitely break the law, too!!!”
It also bears repeating that hypocrisy is learned. And the next generation, they are watching.
mlq3, i believe parity did more harm than the bases. korea ,japan and vietnam also has foreign bases but they maintained control over their resources and redistributed it (via land reform) to the rest of the population.
Anyway, that was one of the most amusing FAQ’s i’ve read. if this was the prevailing mentality of our political leaders…
…then i believe they (whoever prepared the recommendations of the ‘Joint Preparatory Committee) suffered a failure of nerve and, in a sense, didn’t want complete independence.
Are you referring to the present generation?
cjv, you have to remember there was only a few major industries under the colonial economy: sugar, coconut, tobacco, and cordage (abaca).
this will give you an idea of the economic conditions prevalent at the time:
http://philippinesfreepress.wordpress.com/2006/03/10/institutionalizing-state-interventionism-may-1996-2/
and on a different scale, how canning adobo at that time was considered pretty amazing stuff:
http://philippinesfreepress.wordpress.com/2006/03/06/canned-adobo-and-other-st-adventures-october-11-1995-2/
in which case, if those were the industries, the concern of the government at the time was how to protect those industries (seeing as the political leadership was not only subsidized by those industries, but were players in them). you are committing the mistake of looking back with what we know today. at the time, protecting those industries, the only ones we had, made sense from a government’s point of view. even as the same government embarked on creating new ones, which 40 years of american economic presence didn’t set up.
cjv, no. the generations active in the 60s to 80s. today, i’m beginning to think we’re entering a kind of postmodernist phase where both elders and the younger generations think everything is relative.
mlq3: It is interesting how you present the military and police: ” A society …. unexposed to the old institutional controls of education, religion, and civic organization, … has reduced the political, business, and middle classes to even more of a minority status, and thus even more … dependent on the military as its protector and enforcer than even the Marcos government was.”
It may mean something that you (and many others) often leave out the court systems. This is telling because “rule of law” (to me) requires that the military and the police to taking their marching orders more from the courts and less from military-traditions and fraternity camarederie.
my mistake : constitution/ rule of law : … military and police get marching orders from the Executive Branch… the Legislative Branch and the Courts having oversight.
The nation whose existence is founded on principles that recognize the Rule of Law and established the institutions strong enough to withstand the changing of the guards will outlast the many governments it will handle all through its life span…never mind the Personalities or the Parties that will come to govern it… nothing can prove further the theory that it is the Institutions and the Rule of Law, instead of personality and popularity that will make good leaders build a strong and great country. Canada since its birth in l867 was founded on principles that recognize the Supremacy of God and the Rule of Law (that is the Preamble to our Constitution), Governments and personalities come and go, from Macdonald, to Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau , Brian Mulroney, six months of Joe Clark, even shorter terms John Turner and Kim Campbell and it never affect the institutions or the foundation at all…And whoever heard of the Current PM Harper, who by coincidence whose Party won the Government by default due to the Scandal of the administration of the very popular and unbeatable Jean Chretien Liberal?
Many asked Harper who? What school he graduated from? Which province he came from? Yet only after two years of government, since everything already in place and he was voted on the promise of more government accountabality, he delivered those promises as it is the
Electoral process as established and must be followed… the institutions have now deeply rooted and the rule of law is now the guiding principle that tomorrow the government may change hand and the budget surplus won’t just disappear overnight and the corruptions in government will not just pop somewhere and everywhere…
Preamble: Canada Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:
Manolo, this a terribly wonderful read, but rather simplistic. You must imagine, the middle class had no idea the elite was recovering lost profits in the martial law era during Cory’s time. They are not aware of this. If they were, they’d fight rather than leave. Don’t you think?
How long have you believed in this, Manolo?
Yes, I agree with this, but also agree with CVJ. I can imagine your audience with their eyes glazed over as they listen to you. If I said or wrote this, I’d be called a moron or a know nothing. Indeed,I’ve heard it before may times. Don’t blame the politicians, forget being a social critic or fighting for a cause. Just be an entrepreneur and give people jobs, save as many as you can in your own capacity as a humble businessman… but have a business first.
This is avoidance by “creating opportunity” not “avoidance of opportunity.”
So what do I read from Q3’s observation about the new segment/mini-population of cosmopolitan and entreprenurial Filipinos? I pose the question that maybe this new population can chew gum and dance, too… that they can (and do) moan and groan about kotong and the many inefficiencies of the system while their (main) effort is in creating their business/carving out their piece of the pie.
Are they “holding change at bay”? Which change? Maybe what is happening is that they are working for the changes THEY WANT and not working for the land-for-the-landless and other changes that the cvj’s and the schumeys pine for (which can be construed as apathy towards cvj’s priorities). But it should not be surprising that the priorities are different. As Q3 notes, the old institutional controls of education, religion, and civic organization have been weakened.
Still, there remains an intersection of priorities — Rule of law (plus steady water and energy supply, education, public health, public order, among many).
One of the most used and abused word in contemporary Philippine scene is “competitiveness.”
Can anyone answer the question on what this word means?
“In this book, Gerardo Sicat argues that “when we began as a new republic, we were on a competitive footing with the rest of Asia and the world.” This statement is unreal.
Part of the parity rights agreement mandated that monetary policy was vested in the hands of the President of the U.S.
The elite hacendero political establishment had their price support for sugar exports to the U.S. A subsidy that promoted subservience to U.S. domination of Philippine economic policy objectives. (higher guaranteed prices than world prices)
These policies had kept the country tied to the second and third level of trade (import/export for counsumption and carrying trade) to the detriment of the basic foundations of domestic sustainable economic development.
An inverted model of economic policy making as opposed to the natural evolutionary process.
An example of this mindset is the Zubiri push for ethanol from sugar production to save the sugar industry. He said that we could be another Brazil. His ignorance is appalling.
The total land area that Brazil has allocated for sugar production is almost the total land area of the Philippines. (30M hectares)
Total land area alloted to sugar production in the Philippines is less than 6%. Zubiri is one of the leading sponsors of the bill mandating ethanol from sugar be made compulsory to support the sugar industry.
Soon the smugglers will be bringing in cheaper ethanol from Brazil as we will have to protect the more expensive ethanol from our sugar to keep the likes of the Zubiri family in the pink of economic health.
This type of protectionism has kept the Philippines poor and backward.
With the differences in needs, interests and priorities, the Philippines needs leadership. deQuiros or a priest telling people how they should feel or where they should go is not leadership. As General Eisenhower said, “You do not lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.”
Leadership is “… the capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence” (General Bernard Montgomery). Tribal leaders, yes… but a national leader? Methinks the Philippines has not had a national leader for quite a while.
mlq3, thanks for the links. It was not like there were no alternative schools of thought to development available for consideration by our leaders during those days. Our neighbors who achieved independence at around the same time were in the same situation as us with an economic base dependent on agriculture. (In fact, during those times, weren’t we supposed to be relatively better off than the others, i.e. ‘second only to Japan’?) .
nevertheless, their leaders (e.g. Nehru, Ho Chi Minh, even warlord Chiang Kai Shek) were able to carve out a more independent and ultimately more successful approach to economic development by building up their homegrown industries. The previous generation should have listened more to Claro M. Recto (just as we should listen to hvrds today).
How can we have a national leader that will ‘inspire confidence’ if we, who should no better, condone cheating in elections and defend it with the ‘rule of law’. Anyone with common sense will see through such perversity.
‘no’ = ‘know’, sorry.
so nicely written but so wrong, mlq3. with all due respect. the pre-war governance was, i believe, the root of all the evils that our country is facing today. this is not saying that this was all the fault of the leaders of that day. we were a colony until 1946, a subjugated people, despite all pretensions. we were at the mercy of the powers that were dominating us at a given time, spain, japan and the u.s. we were lucky that the last one we had was, arguably, the most benign and democratic and had the most anti-imperialistic segment (which had significant voice) in its society. our homegrown colonial leaders were vying among themselves for political supremacy, advocating even for a “government run like hell” as long as run by filipinos.
those leaders of ours eventually got what they wanted but then, as now, america’s primordial concern was its own interests, economic, political and national security. no one can fault them for demanding a quid prop quo for giving up a territory. thus, they had to be given preferential trade privileges, limited parity rights, military bases, and even a subtle influence on the country’s governance. the magsaysay presidency, popular as it may be conceded to be, saw the flowering of american extraordinary influence on philippine politics and government.
the view that the year 1962 marked the beginning of the decline (from what?) that we are experiencing today is partisan rather than scholarly. i see it as a historical distortion designed for the unquestioning mind, who rely on opinionated “history” than a review of actual record.
1961-65, the era of president diosdado macapagal, actually marked the beginning of a serious attempt to breakaway from american and local oligarchic influences. the replacement of july 4th with june 12 as independence day was a symbolic but eloquent declaration of true nationhood. the institution of comprehensive land reform that ended the cacique-style tenancy system, and laid out the real foundation for the break up of monopolistic landholdings, and its redistribution to the masses, was a display of political courage and unselfishness rarely seen in our politicians, past and present. the elimination of monetary controls (an economic virus contracted during the pre-independence era) that pegged the peso arbitrarily and artificially to an inflexible rate of 2 to 1 dollar, was a poison pill that was bravely taken to move further away from the u.s. stranglehold.
i think the reason the late president macapagal is largely ignored by the likes of you is because he was the only one who can claim real “masa” origin, not a mestizo of any kind, not “wealthy” by aristocratic standard, not ateneo or u.p. or even la salle, not one of the “good ole’ boys”, i.e., no golf, no drinking/gambling, no horseback-riding.
Bencard,
Dont’ forget the second part….
Government run like hell, because we change it!
the second part should be…”because we can change it”. my apologies, Manolo.
bravo, bencard. in my readings of available works on philippine modern history, i often wondered why macapagal don’t seem to get the credit he richly deserves, as though the negativity that had been spread about him in the course of his re-election attempt against marcos, coupled with the hatred of the upper class and distrust of the americans, stayed to this day. i can compare him to bonifacio, the great plebeian, who was relegated to second-tier recognition because of his humble background. the only difference, i suppose, between the two is that bonifacio was a revolutionary in a violent sense, whereas macapagal’s revolution was through enlightened democratic governance.
Under the Bell Trade Act monetary policy was controlled by the U.S.
It was President Magsaysay who actually started the de-linking of the Philippine economy from U.S. domination.
President Macapagal actually actually started the financial ruin of the country by bringing the country under the direct control of the IMF-WB.
Unfortunately instead of going to an independent monetary policy free from oligarchic landed interests (of which his wife was one)he placed the country under the rule of imperial financial interests. It is ironic that his daughter is presiding over the what could be described probably as the disintegration of the Republic.
Dr. Sixto K. Roxas one of the leading technocrats of that time now says that if they had to do it all over again things would be so different. They were so wrong in their
worship of the ideology then of free markets and free trade.
The evolution of markets from simple division of labor to the more complex industrial division of labor that now encompasses the globe is well expressed in the building of the hub in outer space for future space travel to our problems in building basic infrastructure in the country to move people and goods and shit.
A clear analogy to show how modern societies operate is to see what happens to human waste in countries.
Just ask yourselves what happens to all the human waste in the Philippines apart from what Malabanan accounts for.
30% of rivers in the country are fit for consumption while almost 60% of groundwater in the country is polluted. The Philippines is one of the countries in the Asia pacific region that gave up most of its forest resources in the name of free trade and free markets and that has contributed to the slow but sure loss of arable land in the country.
Now the same IMF-WB is teaching us that we have to move to more sustainable growth models that take into consideration the ecology. Remember water is more expensive than oil.
yes, titanium, thanks. and i also take issue with mlq3’s characterization of macapagal as having “authoritarian instinct”. if trying to exercise political courage of doing what is right within the democratic framework, regardless of adverse political repercussion to oneself, is being authoritarian, then i would welcome that with all my heart. that was exactly the criticism leveled at macapagal for insisting on a meaningful land reform. result of the criticism? marcos, with his “constitutional authoritarianism, a.k.a. dictatorship, for almost 2 decades, with the arrogant oligarchs not allied with him scampering all over the place sans their earthly treasures and pomposity.
it was under magsaysay’s presidency, through a treaty negotiated by then senator jose p. laurel, that the u.s. control of philippine monetary system was abolished. but it was president macapagal who actually REMOVED the peso-dollar arbitrary linkage. it could have been done under garcia but he did not.
that membership in the IMF-WB (along with all u.n. members except for less than 10 nondescript totalitarian countries and tiny principalities) is the cause of the “financial ruin” of the country is the height of intellectual pomposity and pretension. that’s garbage, pure and simple.
i suggest that the writer of that crap go back to the stone age and stay there.
The last time I heard was that, it was during the Macapagal era when the Philippines began to be called the “sick man of Asia.” As an economist like his daughter (with his Ph.D. at that), Dadong Macapagal was enamored by globalization, thanks to the World Bank/IMF. Globalization could be good, but it cripples meaningful strategies for growth for a fledgling country. As a consequence (or conditionalities imposed by the WB loan), import-substitution and decontrols (of imports and devaluation of currency) became the policy that started to quash economic gains from earlier years under Garcia.
This policy might have sounded all right, but it invetably led to increased tariff rates just to maintain the import-substitution scheme and protect domestic industries. Someone pointed out that this was a “bad mix of policy,” it hindered new types of export-oriented industrialization.
Everyone talks of “crony capitalism” as the hallmark of the Marcos era. The truth is, it started well ahead of Marcos’s time and was a main explanation for the bad performance in the 1960s. Cronyism just became popular, and more imbedded, under the martial law era.
To Macapagal’s credit, he fell victim to the pernicious gridlock that even Gloria would like to rid by constitutional change. Congress was dominated by NPs, which obstructed some meaningful changes. It’s a good thing that Land Reform was passed early on.
bencard, do read macapagal’s own autobiography. the change in date of independence began as an accident -he was angry over the u.s. congress once again failing to pass benefits for ww2 veterans.
and macapagal was very popular with, and close to, the old oligarchy. they’d sponsored his rise to power, they remained on much closer terms with him personally and politically than say, with marcos. he also had much more upper class manners and tastes than say, marcos who remained quite provincial in tastes and temperament (members of the older generation would explain this not in terms of dm’s having been schooled in UP and UST (see his biodata details at http://pangulo.ph/prexy_dpm.php ), or his being sponsored by Varona, etc. , but due to the relative sophistication of pampangos in comparison to ilocanos!).
you only have to go back to the recollections of people who knew dm, served him, the accounts of the issues of the day, etc. he was, perhaps, our last genuinely (in the personal sense) good president. certainly the last who viewed himself as one in a progression of leaders. and no one could accuse him of being a thief, or a crook. his house in forbes park was made possible with the help of admiring friends from the oligarchy (just as magsaysay’s widow got a home in wack-wack).
but you will not be able to overcome the evaluations of the man from those who knew him, served him, opposed him, or did both, much as the harsh reality is that in the 1965 elections, whatever virtues dm had were overshadowed by the unpopularity of his wife, and whatever defects fm had were compensated for by his wife.
if the phrase “sick man of asia” was first uttered in the 60’s, the condition, if true, was not because of macapagal’s economic policies but was a continuation of the economic malaise the country had been having when he took over garcia. in any event, the measure of macapagal’s presidency is what he had accomplished in terms of lasting positive effect on the lives of filipinos.
free international trade was the result of a global idea that was full of good intentions, not the least of which is the distribution of global wealth to feed and cloth every human being in this world. as any other human idea, it’s far from being foolproof. it contains the seeds of its own imperfection, i.e., the natural inequality of beings, be it individual ability and aptitude, geographical factors, weather conditions, soil quality, etc. what is capable of failure can fail. if globalization has drawbacks and negative results, as lamented by monday morning quarterbacks, the 184 nation-member of the IMF-WB were mistaken, not just a one 4-year term president of the philippines.
i don’t think hatred of “gloria” should be a justification for undercutting diosdado macapagal’s worth as president.
Many have already forgotten those “decontrols,” which came as an offshoot of foreign loans and efforts to make US-RP relations smell good. Experts are more cautious about putting the blame on the WB/IMF, but they didn’t fail to notice its “serious effect” on manufacturing and falling profits compared to pre-decontrols (before 1961). GDP growth averaged 7.7% in 1957-59, but was cut to half, 3.7% in 1960-65.
ALL,
The overarcing impression here is that we could’ve really used a benign dictator, a Marcos who truly had the betterment of his people n his heart.
Brianb, the only purpose of a ‘benign’ dictator would have been to dismantle the landed oligarchy, redistribute their wealth for the purpose of (1) increasing the general population’s purchasing power and (2) investing in industry. Marcos was not able to do that so he was useless. In South Korea, once Park was able to do all the above, the Koreans had enough sense to shoot him so that he won’t outlive his purpose.
But if much of our future depends on the presidency as Manolo suggests, there s indeed a hope.
hope: a realistic expectation that things will improve.
I don’t think American economist Robert Lucas can be considered ‘partisan’ (on Philippine affairs) but this is what he wrote:
Considering the early 60’s as an economic fork in the road for the Philippines is consistent with a scholarly viewpoint (without prejudice to alternative scholarly viewpoints).
it occured to me i wasn’t clear when it comes to explaining the point i wanted to make, concerning who is trying to hold change at bay.
the changes are there, and they involve the elimination of the old obediences. this has left the political pros floundering -rhetoric isn’t working, because it no longer taps into commonly-held aspirations and knowledge, because the old political vocabulary failed to be transmitted, and with it, the common political culture people shared. pragmatism rules the day, business-wise but pragmatism has been turned from something amoral to a new kind of morality (the cult of the market).
the response of the political class has been to shrink provinces, to ensure political control, and a reversion to warlordism on one hand, in the provinces, and the blatant manipulation of institutions on the other. ironically, this is proclaimed a victory for the rule of law when all it is, is the victory of might makes right. that an increasing number thinks this is good, only shows how the old culture has gone extinct.
which isn’t a bad thing, but as in all times of great change, it carries with it the bad, as well. if over-centralism is wrong, it doesn’t mean that a total focus on the local is correct, as well. in any case, the reality is a starker generation gap than ever before, greater even than in the 60s and 70s between the guerrilla generation and the first quarter stormers.
What do you mena it isn’t a bad thing. Seems like democracy’s cancer, this pragmatism.
So it’s localized versus a central-form of government now? Monarchism vs Feudalism?
Historically, people have always sided with Monarchy.
Funny enough, my first creation of the year is a very intuitive slideshow on “Why Filipinos Suck at Democracy”:
Check it out for a few ironic laughs:
http://www.getrealphilippines.com/sh01/slide01.html
Randy David made a very timely quote out of Rizal’s timeless “On the Indolence of Filipinos” in a 29 Dec 2007 *Inquirer.net* article:
“[…] the blind subjection of youth to his elders, influence the mind not to aspire to excel those who preceded him and merely to be content to follow or walk behind them. Stagnation inevitably results from this, and as he who devotes himself to copying fails to develop his inherent qualities […]”
It’s no wonder that we see 2008 as yet another year of living in mediocrity.
Happy New Year!
On the left-leaning (if not actually communist) background of the political leadership of Korea, Taiwan and Singapore:
South Korea: Park Chung Hee
Taiwan: the Koumintang Party
Source for the above: H.J. Chang, The Bad Samaritans
Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew
Although it may have been a stretch for me to conclude that LKY’s shared the convictions of his allies since as Visscher continues….
According to one of the most recent and well-researched books on ‘the beliefs behind the man’, Michael Barr asserted that progressivism and elitism are the two most important building blocks of Lee’s character. The former is a thoroughly Western culture of continual achievement, whereby both Lee and his society had to ‘advance’. According to his analysis, Lee also believes in the superior quality, also genetically, of the elite and sees elite rule as the only reasonable and efficient way to govern. This is the source of his conviction that democracy and notions of egalitarianism should not be allowed to constrain the power or privileges of the ruling elite – Sikko Visscher, The Business of POlitics and Ethnicity
In other words, LKY is Benign0’s intellectual soulmate.
“The increasingly cosmopolitan and entrepreneurial nature of such Filipinos is, at present, inspiring yet another effort to hold change at bay.†– mlq3
My eyes indeed glazed over this one. I hoped you had elucidated more on what you actually mean by this, mlq3. It’s kind of misleading or alarmist (I surmised you are also alarmed without proper cause), when what you actually mean is that by focusing on productive endeavors, the middle classes in general seem to neglect the question of political change for now. But it’s not a cause and effect relationship. The middle classes are a politically aware bunch but are tired of being taken for a ride again by the few but powerful who comprise the upper class who time and time again have not done its part, except when it is perfectly safe or opportune to do so.
The upper class’ opportunism and lack of loyalty or nationalism are the real culprits here that hold change at bay, now and then. If we are looking for an enemy, it is this. Even Marcos acknowledged this. Alas, he failed to demolish this structure of our society – and tragedy was, the dictator’s machinery was co-opted instead, which was the ultimate proof of how powerful the oligarchs in this country are.
If wielding political power is not the way to defeat the enemy as Marcos did, maybe it is through productivity or the economic sphere that would neutralize or weaken the power of the elites. FVR I think had this in mind. And that’s what the OFWs are doing and the entrepreneurs inadvertently are doing. It will be hard for politicians to buy votes for instance, when voters belong to the ranks of the gainfully employed and are not beholden to political interests for their survival.
The middle classes like stability, are generally for the rule of law, yet they were ultimately behind people power, proof that they are not one to shrink from change. But there comes a time when the exercise seems futile if long-term gains are not being realized. I mean after 22 years after Edsa– a generation at that – where has it led us?
Seems to me an order of responsible parties should be emphasized. So guess why the tired middle seems to tolerate GMA for now, after a roller coaster ride in Edsa Uno and Dos, or are lining up in embassies to emigrate instead.
I do not belong to the move-on crowd and I still believe that GMA should still be made accountable, but let’s not forget that GMA’s rise to power was due to the backing of the upper and middle classes. I think the latter class has more than paid its share of dues, but the former has not – ever.
“The upper class’ opportunism and lack of loyalty or nationalism are the real culprits here that hold change at bay, now and then. If we are looking for an enemy, it is this.”
Then again as a famous webmaster once said:
‘Great nations were not built on good intentions. They were built on business sense. Real change in Pinoy society will never be achieved through the “sacrifice” of altruistic “heroes”. True change will be driven by people who find no shame in expecting a buck for their trouble.’
Step back and think, what is “nationalism” anyway? I believe “nationalism” is a concept conjured up by the powers that be to create a focal point in the minds of the vacuous masses (kind of like how rosary prayers were invented to keep the minds of the devout occupied).
Maddona, i guess your criticism of the Upper Class without seeing the need for immediate action in the political sphere is what Gen Lim meant when he said that “Dissent without action is consent“. Conceding the moral high ground is a very dangerous thing for the middle class to do since our proxies (like Gloria Arroyo) will not always be the ones in power.
Nationalism is an integral element in the economic takeoff of our neighbors. Just ask your idol Lee Kuan Yew how much resources they put into their ‘National Day’ celebrations.
The difference with rosary prayers (aka religion) is that love of country (aka nationalism) gives us something, i.e. the development of the Nation, to collectively work for. Remember when, during their economic crisis 1998, ordinary South Koreans volunteered their personal jewelry to pay-off their foreign debts? That gives us an peek into the mentality that made their country prosperous.
“Remember when, during their economic crisis 1998, ordinary South Koreans volunteered their personal jewelry to pay-off their foreign debts? That gives us an peek into the mentality that made their country prosperous.”
Seems more like a cultural thing to me.
Hey Benigno, I for one believe that nationalism and getting a buck for one’s efforts are not mutually exclusive. Work hard and earn money and do it for yourself and for your country. Simple enough. You just want to twist things. And nationalism has been a driving force in the rise of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, need I say more examples. Take it from a Korean who said that one of the problems we Filipinos have is that we don’t love our country enough. We always take the easy way out and take on another nationality if the going gets tough.