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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| GMA: the best there is; but her best may not be good enough By Antonio C. Abaya October 3, 2001 The good news is that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has matured in her job. She is now more presidential than she was eight months ago, when she exuded an air of giggly girlishness incompatible with the office and the demands of the times. She is now more self-assured than she was last May 2001, which augurs well for the continued stability of the country. She has also shown political savvy in the way that she has dealt, at least temporarily, with contending forces in Philippine society, from the communists, the Muslim secessionists, the trapos and the organizations of civil society, to the Church and the military. The only sector that remains implacably hostile to her is the Estrada gangster nomenklatura and the human detritus that they occasionally dredge up from the swamp. It can even be argued that she is the best president this country has had since 1986. Certainly her sybaritic predecessor, Joseph Estrada, morally and intellectually unfit for the position, does not even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. Cory Aquino served the important historical purpose of dismantling the Marcos kleptocracy, but after that it was downhill all the way. Like Fidel Ramos, GMA is a workaholic who demands the same ethos from her subalterns. But unlike the consensual and permissive Ramos, she is a hard-driving taskmaster who does not hesitate to knock heads and kick butts when the situation demands it, a quality that Filipinos would like to see more in their presidents but have not actually seen since Manuel Quezon. That�s the good news. The bad news is that her best may not be good enough to save this country from a fate worse than death: humiliating poverty and insurmountable mediocrity. ***** That was the impression I got after a one-hour dialogue we three Tonys (Tony Lopez and Tony Cabangon Chua, publisher and chairman, respectively, of this publication) had with her last Saturday, September 29. In the final analysis, it is the war on poverty against which the success or failure of a government will be measured, whether that government is liberal or authoritarian, capitalist or socialist. And the war on poverty can be won only by creating jobs, or, more exactly, by creating the conditions for the growth of enterprises that create jobs. Poverty cannot be overcome, and jobs cannot be created, by prayers or by wishful thinking. There is no substitute for correct economic strategies and the political will to pursue those strategies. The Philippines has been left behind by its neighbors because of wrong choices in economic strategies. In the 1970s, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore geared their economies towards the export of manufactured goods. In the 1980s, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia followed that example. The Philippines did not take this tack until the 1990s, under President Fidel Ramos, but by that time the global marketplace had become overcrowded with the entry of a rapidly resurgent China. The downturn in the global economy from the late 1990s to the present does not erase the validity of the export-led economic growth of the seven Asian tigers since the 20 to 30 years of rapid growth built for each of these countries not only a broad and diversified manufacturing base but also a large consuming middle class, both of which now serve those countries (except Indonesia, which is beset by political problems as well) in good stead as the domestic market takes up some of the slack caused by the weakening of the export market. The Philippines, on the other hand, having been left behind in the export boom, failed to develop a similar manufacturing base � its so-called high-tech industries are really mere assembly plants for imported components, creating very little value-added - and consequently also failed to develop as big a middle class as its neighbors. And its manufacturing sector, already modest to begin with, has been decimated in the past three or four years by a flood of imported goods under the rubric of free trade and globalization - another bad choice in economic strategy - resulting in hundreds of thousands of job losses and the free fall of the losers from the middle to the lumpen class, unless they manage to find employment abroad. ***** Given this background, it is hard to imagine how the Arroyo Government can win its war on poverty. President Arroyo boasted of 300,000 new jobs created in the past month, and her economic managers claim another two million or so in the past year. But these numbers (like well-fed rabbits drawn out of a hat) are deceptive because they mirror mostly the underground or informal economy; they are not backed up, for example, by corresponding increases in the membership of the SSS and the GSIS or in the rolls of tax filers and tax payers in the BIR. These are mostly desperate citizens who, having lost their jobs or unable to find jobs in the first place, are forced to become self-employed or underemployed in order to survive, by becoming pedicab drivers, sidewalk vendors, pyramid hustlers, fixers in government bureaus, drug-pushers, colorum drivers, sweepstakes vendors, GROs, small time buy-and-sell operators, jueteng runners, akyat-bahay entrepreneurs, cell-phone grabbers, pickpockets, pimps, prostitutes, etc. They are not the stuff that tiger economies are made of. The medium term development plan of the Arroyo government reflects her bias against manufacturing. Its strategy for creating new jobs is to focus on agriculture, information and communications technology (ICT), and tourism, apparently in that order of importance. Not a word is mentioned about developing a broad manufacturing sector, which apparently will be allowed to wither on the vine from the onslaught of free trade and globalization. And yet, despite its importance in keeping food prices affordable, agriculture cannot sustain a population of 78 million. Even predominantly agricultural countries like Denmark (pop 5.3 mil) and New Zealand (pop 3.8 mil) have developed world-class manufacturing industries. As I had previously argued with NEDA Sec. Dante Canlas in a forum with civil society, one hectare of agricultural land, planted to rice or corn, cannot sustain even one family. One hectare of land, if converted into a manufacturing center, can sustain hundreds of families. When I raised this point with GMA, her curt reply was, �The debate between agriculture and manufacturing is a 20th century debate.� It is improper to argue with the President face-to-face, but at least I have this platform from which to reply that we are a 19th century economy trying to crash into the 20th and it is appropriate for us to use 20th century thinking to achieve this goal, especially since all our successful neighbors, without exception, owe their spectacular success to broad-based manufacturing industries, geared at first towards export, but now serving their domestic markets as well. Besides, the darling industry of the 21st century, ICT, has imploded from inflated hubris about its own importance, resulting in hundreds of thousands of job losses all over the world, including and especially the richest countries on the planet. Now is not the right time to wax eloquent about ICT when erstwhile hotshots from Silicon Valley are over-represented in long lines at the unemployment offices. As for tourism, this has indeed much potential, but simply because it has been one of the most glaring failures of this country. While our neighbors are drawing in seven to twelvet million tourists a year, we are getting only 2.2 million, and that includes hundreds of thousands of OFWs coming home for Christmas. In 1991, Indonesia and the Philippines were each drawing one million visitors; now Indonesia attracts more than five million, while we are stuck at 2.2. It has to do with image, ours being one of political instability, poor infrastructure and rampant lawlessness. Dick Gordon has his work cut out for him, but it will be a long uphill battle. ***** President Arroyo�s ideological bias against manufacturing shows in other instances. When asked if she was prepared to lead a Buy Filipino! campaign in order to save Filipino manufacturing jobs, she demurred, saying that such is already being done by Raul Concepcion and his group. But, Mrs. President, your active endorsement would be worth much more than Ronnie�s (and his twin brother�s) weight in gold, and they are both fat. When reminded that she was the principal sponsor of the GATT/WTO bill in the Senate when President Ramos was pushing for accelerated free trade, and asked if she now had second thoughts about the wisdom of free trade, GMA protested that she was never in favor of free trade, that what she was pushing for was globalization and borderless economies. But, Mrs. President, aren�t all three one and the same thing? How does one have a globalized and borderless economy without free trade? It is apparent that President Arroyo�s ideological bias against manufacturing and in favor of globalization is unshakeable. She feels vindicated that in the second quarter of 2001, GNP grew by more than three percent despite a further weakening of the battered manufacturing sector. She will probably not appreciate being reminded that, based on the experience of our more successful neighbors, it takes at least TWENTY YEARS or eighty successive quarters of at least SEVEN TO EIGHT PERCENT growth, achieved largely through manufacturing, for a country to graduate from poverty to prosperity. Given her unshakeable ideological bias, her best may not be good enough. ***** This article appeared in the October 22, 2001 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic |