Dilawan: Rise and Fall of the EDSA Regime - Part 1

PART 1: ORIGIN STORY

From 1986 to 2016, the worldview of the yellow forces in our country dominated the thinking and actions of most Filipinos.

Yellowism or dilawan ideology is a system of moral, political and economic beliefs with normative prescriptions and modalities for regulating and regenerating Philippine society.

It provided a narrative, around which the life of the nation was structured. 

A whole new generation of young Filipinos has been brought up with this belief system.

In 2016, an epoch-making shift took place with the election of Pres. Rody Duterte. To many, this marked the end of the yellow orthodoxy.

In this episode of The Cusp, I’m gonna try to explain what happened. What led to the rise and collapse of the yellow doctrine and the ongoing search for something to replace it.

Videos referred to on the pitfalls of Marcos:
1. Lust for power https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4vigtWp08
2-3 Greed and hubris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxdvmHDV9cA
4. Might makes right https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwHLWWGGry8
5. Debt-driven growth strategy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbB3DyfFOVg&t=22s

Episode 19: We need bridge builders in the senate

As the homestretch of the campaign approaches, both the Catholic clergy and laypeople have joined the opposition in seeking to block Pres. Duterte's moves to amend the constitution in the next congress during the second half of his term.

It has given rise to the question, what do the times call for? Can there be no middle ground between the ka-DDS and anti-Duterte dilawan groups? What does history tell us about dealing with such a situation?

Back in 1983, the late Sen. Benigno Aquino, Jr. came home from his furlough in the United States to offer Pres. Marcos, his jailer for 7-1/2 years, an olive branch of reconciliation to work towards a modus vivendi or grand bargain. Does his example of seeking to work constructively with his staunch adversary offer lessons as to how the Opposition today can successfully disarm the Duterte administration's creeping authoritarianism?

Get the show notes here.

Why land reform succeeded in Taiwan and Korea but failed in the Philippines?

The US made three attempts between 1903 and 1918 to institute land reform and distribution in the Philippines (a hundred years ago). Each of these attempts failed. Iyer and Maurer, two scholars from Harvard Business School examine the economic history of the Philippines under Spanish and American colonial rule, and point out why these attempts failed.

The article below is worth a read for anyone interested in knowing why property rights in the Philippines had been weak, and made it costly under those circumstances to pursue an asset reform program. The lessons learned in the Philippines, and different circumstances during the Cold War allowed US-sponsored land reform in Taiwan and Korea to succeed in a relatively short period of time. This laid the foundation for their rapid industrialization.

Covered by Iyer and Maurer is the effect of the Treaty of Paris at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War on the disposition of friar lands, whose acquisition by the US government from the Catholic Church at many times their potential annual income served as a disincentive to the proper implementation of land reform and distribution in the country.