Eternal Sunshine of an Ahistorical Mind: Rejoinder to Monsod, Magno, Punongbayan, et al.

Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) Nos. 6 and 7 seek to amend portions of our constitution that deal with foreign ownership in public utilities, basic education, and advertising. The current limits on foreign ownership in these sectors would remain, but Congress would be authorized to modify them through ordinary legislation. 

The University of the Philippines School of Economics (UPSE) issued a Discussion Paper (DP) recently in response to deliberations in the House of Representatives. The paper entitled, “How to change a constitution by hand-waving (Or, the unbearable lightness of evidence2 in support of lifting foreign ownership restrictions)” questions the validity of evidence used to support both resolutions. 

This reaction paper below seeks to unpack what the UP professors allege is the weak evidence presented at the House and evaluate their counter evidence.

In addition, I recorded a series on The Cusp Youtube Channel that covers the main arguments of the rejoinder. Here they are in order (see below).

Dilawan: Rise and Fall of the EDSA Regime - Another Aquino

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Those were the words of Pres. Noynoy Aquino at his valedictory State of the Nation Address to Congress in July of 2015 where he summed up his administration’s achievements and looked forward to “a new dawn of justice and opportunity” forged by “freedom from corruption” as he claimed, and I quote

My one and only interest is the well-being of my Bosses. I did all I could to forge a nation that is more just and more progressive—one that enjoys the fruits of meaningful change. I will let history decide.

And within 12 months of uttering those words, the era of the EDSA regime would draw to a close, with the rejection of Aquino’s hand-picked successor and the election of Rodrigo Duterte, whose approach to criminal justice was anathema to what the regime had stood for.

In this fourth part to the Rise and Fall of the EDSA Regime, we will look at the second Aquino presidency, its ambition, achievements and follies, and while five years is too short a time frame to have gained enough “distance” from those events, we will try to explain what led to the collapse in confidence in the yellow movement, which triggered their losses at the ballot in 2016 and since, and as to why it is unlikely that it will return any time soon. 

Dilawan: Rise and Fall of the EDSA Regime - Uno, Dos Tres

"I am the Market and thou shalt have no other models before me."

That is the first commandment of neoliberalism, an ideology that took root in the Philippines after the February 1986 people power revolt at EDSA.

In this series on the Rise and Fall of the EDSA Regime, we’ve been looking at the origins of the yellow movement and its impact on Philippine society. 

Episode: 27: Leni's Drug Report - Success or Epic Fail?

Is it true that the government's anti-drug campaign is a massive failure, as per what VP Leni Robredo stated in her report as Co-Chair of the Inter-agency Committee for the Anti-illegal Drugs?

Links referred to:
Co-Chair's Report: https://issuu.com/inquirerdotnet/docs/2034815782856108625376143966175767021
UN Office for Drugs and Crime stats: https://dataunodc.un.org/drugs
Manila Bulletin article quoted in report: https://news.mb.com.ph/2019/11/28/ph-consumes-at-least-3-tons-of-shabu-every-week-pnp/
Philippine Statistical Authority's population projections: https://psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/attachments/hsd/pressrelease/Table4_9.pdf
Policy brief: https://cusp-ph.blogspot.com/2018/10/policy-brief-using-evidence-in.html
Social Weather Stations: https://www.sws.org.ph/swsmain/artcldisppage/?artcsyscode=ART-20191016152026

Episode 26: Yellow Alert! How do you address populism?

In the first part of this series, we showed how the weakening of democratic institutions in the country can be traced to the establishment of neoliberal economic policies, which have given rise to a populist backlash. 

The Philippine debt driven, crony capitalist growth of the 1970s under Pres. Marcos led to the IMF prescribed austerity measures of the 1980s under Pres. Cory Aquino and the globalist trend of the 1990s under Pres. Fidel Ramos. The Philippine state and its economy was too weak for the state to say no to the imposition of policies from external lenders.

This led to a populist backlash from the left in 1998, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. The election of Pres. Joseph Erap Estrada was a response to the austerity under which  the government had to spend more on debt service than education contrary to our constitutional provisions. It was also based on Erap’s charisma and cult of personality.

Episode 22: Is Federalism fizzling out...or just getting started?

Following the resounding victory of his coalition at the midterm polls, the enigmatic Pres. Rodrigo Duterte seemed to back away from his campaign pledge to push for federalism. But are his statements to be taken at face value, or are they simply a way for him to spark a debate on the issue and incite those in favour of charter change to come out in support of it?

Recall that when he was considering a run for the presidency, he declined to be drafted several times. Was it a way for him to gauge the public’s sentiment in support of his candidacy? We know he eventually decided to run, and many said he had already made up his mind long before then. Is he working off the same playbook here? Is he gauging the public’s appetite once again, this time in favour of federalism?

Hi, I’m Doy Santos, and on this edition of The Cusp, we’re going to look at the push for federalism, and answer the question, Is Federalism fizzling out, or is it just getting started?

Episode 20: EDSA Tragics and Voter Realists

There seems to be a message for the opposition contained in most recent polling. The slippage of support for Otso Diretso seems to reflect voter doubts over the false choice being presented to them.

As we reach the homestretch of the campaign, the final pitch for why we should vote for their slate seems to be that what we need is an independent senate that will block Duterte from having a supermajority that would amend the constitution.

Voters clearly don’t see it that way. They want to see the opposition present a credible alternative plan before voting for them. But what the opposition has presented so far, doesn’t really seem to appeal to them.

Episode 18: The senate race is like an episode of Celebrity Apprentice

The Senate race has gone to new depths. From a Spratlys Island jet skiing by Otso Diretso to penis size comparisons between the president and Jim Paredes, and shirt stripping by SAP Bong Go to prove he has no tattoos in his back, and not a member of a drug gang. We’re no longer talking about the issues. It has gotten ugly really quickly.

We’ve forgotten what this election is meant to be about. As in every election we are meant to be discussing the key question: what should the role of government be in our lives?

In our last episode, we looked at the senate race of 2019, and saw how much of it was driven by personality and not principles. We said that a general trend in all senate races since 1987 was the popularity contest that it has become. This is evidenced by the growing number of celebrities or celebrity-related candidates that are present in the senate. So how do we make our senate more representative, instead of mimicking an episode of Celebrity Apprentice?

Show notes available here.

Episode 17: Otso Diretso, MaBaGoKoTo, Hugpong, atbp.

The countdown to election day begins.

We are now about 30 days away from the 2019 midterms. In this episode we’ll be looking at the senate race, and how that has been unfolding. We compare the competing candidates' platforms, namely Otso Diretso's campaign platform and PDP-Laban's.

When you put the two parties’ positions side-by-side there is a clear contrast between them, both in terms of their overarching philosophies and approach to governance and development. Those who say that this election isn’t about ideas are wrong. There are clear battle lines here, and they are not just personality-driven.

Get the transcripts of the show from here.

Erratum: in counting the number of senators that became VP, I mistakenly included Mar Roxas in the list.

Episode 16: Mahathir's Malaysia and the virtues of a parliamentary system

Malaysian PM Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad's visit to Manila in March 2019 has inevitably led some people to draw comparisons between the two nations. Malaysia follows a federal parliamentary system while the Philippines is unitary and presidential. They have reached a level of economic progress that the Philippines can only aspire to. How did they do it?

In this podcast we look at key differences between the two systems, and try to answer the question, would a shift to a parliamentary system benefit the Philippines. We avoid the chicken-and-egg question of what should come first: culture change or structural change? We do this by differentiating the incentives under either system and show how that shapes behavior and eventually the culture.

Read the transcripts of the show here.

From New Society to post-EDSA reality

The vision of the New Society under Pres. Marcos was to usher in a new order from the decaying old republic. The era of the Commonwealth in the Philippines was a gilded age that offered few avenues for upward mobility. Political bosses delivered the votes at national elections, and oligarchs fuelled party machineries to get out the vote.  

It naturally bred social unrest, which came to a boil in both the Huk rebellion and Marxist CPP insurgency. Marcos’ solution was to instigate a revolution from the center, to save the system from itself. Out of the chaos where both elites and mass movements conspired to rob the state of its capacity to govern, the New Society would bring such destructive forces to heel.

Marcos defied them by adopting a long-range vision and introducing modern methods in implementing that vision. He allowed technocrats to perform these functions. And while the president busied himself with economic matters, his wife took up the cudgels for art and culture.

State-run media controlled the narrative. The Philippines would be “great again” as Marcos pledged at his first inaugural.

The only plot hole in this arc was that it all depended on one individual. Marcos had arogated all power to himself. This lack of accountability tempted him, his wife and cronies to amass great wealth.This, in turn made them feel invincible. Thinking he could hold on to power indefinitely, Marcos failed to groom a successor.

When his regime finally fell, it left a massive hole, which took decades to fill. The EDSA ‘people power’ revolt that toppled him simply revived the old republic, with certain protections to prevent the state from interfering in the way individuals chose to live. Many of the New Society’s projects were abandoned. From one grand vision, it became, to each his own.

If the New Society sought to transform the individual through order and discipline, the EDSA regime sought to transform society by empowering people with individual freedoms. There was no obligation to serve a nobler cause. The individual was at the center of this universe. Everything else was meant to fulfill its desires.

The only problem was that over time, as the population grew rapidly, following the dismantling of Marcos’ population program, the enjoyment of one individual’s personal freedoms seemed to ‘crowd out’ that of others. These ‘negative externalities’ as economists like to call them, began to erode the quality of life for all, rich and poor alike.

The old republic survived thirty years from 1935 to Marcos’s election in 1964. His reign lasted twenty years from 1965 to 1985. The EDSA regime began in 1986. Thirty years later in 2016, the election of Pres. Duterte brought it to an end.

As the first post-EDSA president to enunciate a grand vision for society, Duterte’s war on drugs, corruption and criminality, his massive infrastructure program, and ambitious clean-up of Boracay and Manila Bay have sought to reimpose the welfare of society over the rights of the individual.

Duterte is doing this while supporting programs aimed at empowering people with economic freedoms. Under his watch, universal access to quality tertiary education, healthcare, school feeding programs, and the expansion of maternity leave and senior citizen benefits are occurring.

Is this a synthesis of the New Society and EDSA narratives? A golden mean between the welfare of society and the rights of individuals?

What happens after Duterte leaves? Will his successors hew strictly to one of these narratives? Or will they express them both in multiple ways.

The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze illustrated, that the same word unités, stands for both unity and unit. Neither one precludes the other. The same applies to grand narratives involving society and the individual. There is no preordained hierarchy, no predestined point at which history concludes.

If politics is the art of the possible, then instead of posing the question, how must one govern, or what is to be done? The question might instead become, how could one govern, or how might things be done?

Obama Seeks to Curb Outsourcing

With 2012 being an election year, President Obama set out to frame his re-election bid in November around the economy. Having cited employment and productivity gains of late, he then targeted his ire on tax incentives offered to multinational companies for outsourcing business activities overseas.

The following is an excerpt from his State of the Union Address:

If you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it. That money should be used to cover moving expenses for companies...that decide to bring jobs home.
Second, no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas. From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax. And every penny should go toward lowering taxes for companies that choose to stay here and hire here.
Third, if you’re an American manufacturer, you should get a bigger tax cut. If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making products here. And if you want to relocate in a community that was hit hard when a factory left town, you should get help financing a new plant, equipment, or training for new workers.
It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I’ll sign them right away.

 Just as he decried the uneven playing field that countries like China have created by undervaluing their currency, he advocated the use of the tax system to provide credits and government subsidies to industries (particularly in the clean energy and advanced technology sectors) as a way of ensuring that America was "built to last". All this was part of the solution in addressing what he called "the defining issue" of his presidency--keeping the American dream alive.

Well, well, well, it seems that Washington is no longer enamored with the Washington Consensus. As it pushes for free trade agreements across the globe to lower trade barriers for its products and to enforce the intellectual property rights of its companies, it is clear that the administration has no qualms about engaging in market interventions at home to boost the competitiveness of its local industries.

London Burning

No matter how hard he tries, David Cameron's attempts to evade responsibility not just for the conditions that may have caused or contributed to the eruption of riots in London, but also the inadequacy of the response to it, it is becoming apparent that not only politicians, but the public at large are losing faith with his reforms and the Big Society it promises.

Cameron of course, beset by calls from the Labor Opposition to reconsider cuts to the police budget laid the blame on parents and the so-called broken society. The rioting was criminality run wild, not a form of political protest against an unjust social order. The police response was slow and tactically wrong, he intoned during parliamentary debates.

Unfortunately for him, the police did not take too kindly to this characterization of events, and the public appear to back them instead of the political leaders. The seeming disconnection of the politicians who were on holiday, the PM in Tuscany, his deputy in France and the London Lord Mayor Boris Johnson in the United States, when the burning of London raged surely did not help build credibility for them.

In this situation, the importance not only of empathy but also a desire to ease suffering on the part of ordinary citizens could have gone a long way.