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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Defeating the Communists III
By Antonio C. Abaya Written Feb. 13, 2007 For the Standard Today, February 15 Just to keep things in proper perspective, let me remind readers that the first two installments of this essay were a reaction to a cover story in TIME magazine (Asia edition, Feb 05) that purported to show � as the cover blurb says � �why the Philippine government may never defeat (the New People�s Army).� In actual fact, that cover story did nothing of the sort. It did not explain the economic failures of the Philippines since the 1970s, which, because of the insufficiency of jobs in the economy, have driven thousands of people over the years to join the NPA out of despair over their poverty, and have driven eight million others to seek abroad the jobs that they could not find here. There are other economic causes, of course, but I have concentrated on the exports and tourism sectors because these are the sectors where we differed markedly from our immediate neighbors, and where their successes and our failures can be easily quantified and compared side by side in dramatic contrast. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was de rigueur among communists and nationalists to blame our economic failures on American imperialism and the conditionalities of the IMF. But, as far as I know, neither the Americans nor the IMF prevented or discouraged us from going into the export of manufactured goods or from developing a vibrant tourism industry. This was the sovereign choice in economic strategies of Filipino leaders, from Marcos to Arroyo. And the growing numbers of the unemployed and under-employed at home, together with the eight million Filipinos forced to seek their fortunes abroad, are eloquent testimonies to the folly of those sovereign choices. So also with our most dramatic social failure: our runaway population growth rate. Again, neither the Americans nor the IMF pressured us NOT to have a pro-active population management program.. They in fact pushed for the opposite, and for their trouble, irony of ironies, became the objects of attacks from Catholic conservatives for their �condom imperialism.� Almost all our national leaders, from Marcos to Arroyo � the solitary exception being the Protestant President Ramos � refrained from pushing for population control, terrified as they were/are of incurring the ire of the Catholic bishops. Compared side by side with our neighbors�, our galloping population growth rate � three times that of South Korea , Taiwan , Singapore , Thailand and China � means that the modest economic gains that we have achieved in the past 40 years have been literally eaten up by so many additional mouths to feed. The insufficiency of jobs in the domestic economy , due to wrong choices in economic strategies, compounded with a runaway population growth rate, have helped maintain our despair quotient at a high level, providing additional recruits for the NPA and the front organizations of the NDF, especially from among those who do not have the skills and the personal initiative to seek employment abroad. This is one reason why the Arroyo government cannot defeat the NPA and the Communist movement. Not in three, six or ten years. The other reason is the inability of the Arroyo government to craft a creative and imaginative response to the Communist challenge, or to muster the political will to use draconian measures to crush it with. The creative and imaginative response must come first. The best way to defeat an Idea is to offer a Better Idea. If it succeeds, there would be little or no need for those draconian measures at all.. But it is hard to see what Better Idea the Arroyo government has cultivated in the six years that it has been in power, even though it has an anti- poverty commission that is presumably wracking its collective brains trying to conceptualize what can be done to reduce poverty. About two to three years ago, President Arroyo launched a program under which her government would give away P2,000 worth of free food every month to the 20 neediest families in every barangay nationwide. The proposed budget was P6 billion a month, or P72 billion a year. This was a classic illustration of the adage that the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions. It also violated another commonsensical rule of thumb: even if you give free fish to a starving man, he would starve again after that fish is consumed. But if you were to teach him how to catch fish��.. Besides, I wrote in my critique, such a plan was not workable. In the Philippine context, it would be subject to so much corruption, pilferage and favoritism at the distribution and barangay levels, that it would create more problems than it could solve. In addition, who determines who the 20 neediest families are? In my barangay�s squatter colony, I wrote, there must be at least 100 families who would consider themselves among the 20 neediest. They are not likely to take it quietly if they were excluded from those freebies. Imagine the tempests in teapots that this plan would generate in 100,000 barangays every month. Mercifully, this plan was abandoned. (See my article Dumb and Dumber, Sept 29, 2004 ). Next idea, please. This next idea was borrowed from Hernando de Soto , the Peruvian social scientist who is the darling of the NGO-donors set in Washington DC , who was hired by President Arroyo as a consultant for poverty alleviation. The De Soto Formula is to give squatters (or informal settlers) titles to the land that they occupy so that they can take a loan against it to start a small business and thereby rise from poverty. The Arroyo government proposed to launch this plan at the Philippine National Railways right-of-way, from Caloocan to Muntinlupa. I critiqued this plan on the grounds that selling this valuable property to the squatters would preclude the possibility of a much-needed high-speed commuter railway ever being built on this site; that it would not alleviate much poverty since a 20-sqm lot � sitting less than two meters away from an operating rail line -will not secure a significant loan, only enough to be squandered in a weekend of drinking and gambling. Someone from Washington, undoubtedly one of De Soto�s drumbeaters, critiqued my critique, until I explained to him that this property was only about 15-20 meters wide but about 22 kilometers long, and was, logically, best reserved for a north-south high-speed commuter railway that Metro Manila needs so badly. He agreed, and the De Soto plan was also mercifully abandoned. (See my article Hernando�s Give-Away, Nov. 03, 2004 ) Instead, in one of the most unpublicized triumphs of the Arroyo government � unpublicized probably because it was implemented by a potential challenger, VP Noli de Castro - the squatters have been quietly removed � without any fuss or pitched battles between them and the demolition crews - from along the PNR tracks and moved to a relocation site in Cabuyao, Laguna, to make way for that high-speed commuter railway, to be built with Korean or Chinese money.. My point is that the Arroyo government, despite the many bright boys and girls in its team, suffers from a poverty of creative imagination, and is not capable of coming up with the Better Idea that is needed in order to overcome the Communist Idea. And even if they were to come up with that Better Idea, who is going to implement it? President Arroyo has become so unpopular � and rightly so, if only because of the Garci tapes and the fertilizer scam � that she has low credibility, especially among the crucial middle class. She has lost all power to inspire and motivate, if she ever had it at all. On the other hand, she cannot delegate that Better Idea to someone else, as she would risk being over-shadowed and outshone by that someone else, who could possibly emerge as the New Magsaysay that the middle class is looking for. In 1953, the original Ramon Magsaysay Sr. had become so popular with the rich, the poor and the middle class, for having defeated the Huks and the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas �with all-out force and all-out friendship� (and a little help from US Col. Ed Landsdale) that he was voted president practically unanimously (I exaggerate, of course), roundly defeating the incumbent, re-electionist President Elpidio Quirino. In 2007, President Arroyo cannot make that same mistake of letting one of her lieutenants outshine and overshadow her because that would be detrimental to her ultimate goal, to remain in power beyond 2010. So, to get back to the original topic, the Communist insurgency cannot be defeated in three, six or ten years, because President Arroyo does not have a Better Idea to counter it with. And she does not have the moral ascendancy to use draconian but legal measures (as in Malaysia and Singapore ) to crush it with. On the other hand, as Joma Sison himself admitted recently, their final victory will come only after �hundreds of years.� When the Philippine population, even if the growth rate were to drop from 1.95 to 1.0% per annum, will be 424 million (in 2100), 849 million (in 2200) or 3.2 billion (in 2400). Something to be cheerful about, at least. ***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles since 2001 at www.tapatt.org OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |