RH bill: A cop-out for industrialization

CRITIC'S CRITIC
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/30-6/4/2011



Last Monday, Conrado de Quiros, in his “There’s the Rub” Inquirer column, wrote: “RH, the antis keep saying, is not the solution to poverty. Of course not, as I said the last time. Not by itself. Neither is land reform, neither is fighting corruption, neither is graduating from college. Not by themselves. But taken together, they do push back poverty and misery immeasurably. Indeed, RH alone may not solve poverty, but the lack of it adds to poverty and misery all by itself. The absence of it deepens pain and suffering all by itself. The benighted opposition to it spreads benightedness and ignorance all by itself.”

I quote him fully here to show that the he omits an obvious common denominator in every country that has begun to overcome poverty, be it China , South Korea, or in particular, India, which had scrapped its population control program back when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984. That common denominator is agro-industrial development; and there’s the rub in De Quiros’ enumerated solutions to our nation’s poverty.

You can have all the RH laws to try to control population, push land reform and/or fight corruption through all eternity, and graduate all your young people from college; but without agro-industrial development, there’s no chance for them to rise from economic backwardness to progressive modernity.

However, if you have agro-industrial development, even without a population control program, you can grow the economy, expand a middle class, and raise the general level of employment and standard of living, such as what we have seen in India .

China, which is invariably used as a poster child of the pro-RH bill proponents such as De Quiros, would still be in the deepest mires of poverty even with its One-Child policy if it did not adopt a determined policy of agricultural development and food self sufficiency while building domestic industry in all facets, from steel to petrochemicals. China ’s first two great projects were Daching , its first domestic oil production around which industries were built, and Dachai, which was its agricultural prototype.

Conrado de Quiros’ column faulted his and the Yellows’ one-time idol Manny Pacquiao for opposing the RH bill. That after Pacquiao’s great “yellow gloves” in Nevada , where “He was going to put on yellow gloves for the fight, he said, to show that he wasn’t just fighting Mosley, he was also fighting poverty. Yellow is of course President Benigno Aquino III’s special color, so Pacquiao’s subliminal pitch was that he was in fact joining government in fighting it. I was elated and said after the fight that if he could only do to poverty what he did to Mosley, the poor would be saved in no time at all.”

Now, with Pacquiao opining from his simplistic “poor man, obedient flock” platform opposing the RH bill, he is suddenly “not so great” anymore for Conrado. It just goes to show how the pro-RH bill advocates use celebrity endorsers instead of firm demographic and economic arguments. But as Conrado de Quiros himself wrote in the column, “What the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away.” Never mind if they used Pacquiao before, Pacquiao as an argument has now been taken away.

The major disservice the pro-RH apologists in media are committing against the people is their obfuscation of the issue of the causes of poverty, bringing the discussion to the level of emotional sectarianism by invoking the “prayles” to distract from the economic policy issues. Population is a boon to development and growth if there is a program of economic growth based on the national development paradigm of the establishment of self-sustaining, self-sufficient agro-industrial infrastructure versus the neoliberal economics of liberalization, privatization, and deregulation.

The RH bill debates give the exploitative economic and political ruling class the excuse to distract from the need for the re-nationalization of privatized basic industries and public utilities, as well as the restoration of state direction and planning, its protection for industries, and the institution of anti-trust, anti-monopolistic policies to subdue the runaway greed of the oligarchs and their trapo cohorts amid the backdrop of US-imposed globalization.

Richard Mendoza sent us through our blog New Katipunero a YouTube videolink of an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the population issue by Dick Cavett 35 years ago. Ono opined that population is not really a problem since it is just a situation that will balance itself out, as some parts of the world have more populations whereas others have surplus food. Lennon called it a myth, a mere scare story to divert from the Vietnam War and the independence struggle in Northern Ireland .

Oh, and do you know that for the past 35 years the Philippines’ population growth of 7 percent has been reduced to 2.8 percent by 2008 without the multibillion subsidy the RH bill wants for RH drugs and devices? By sheer economic pressure and changing attitudes, this rate is expected to naturally decline to the replacement level of 2.1 percent by 2025 according to a group of UP scholars led by economist Prof. Romeo Balanquit. Why then are the pro-RH people insisting on spending billions?

By the way, couldn’t the pro-RH advocates and legislators zero in on other approaches that will utilize an effective exercise of iron free will, or reproductive choice, which will not cost the country a gargantuan sum? Ah, but I don’t think such a measure will pass as the billions waiting to be squandered for condoms and other contraceptives, not to mention other enticements from the contraceptives lobby, are just too tempting to resist for the porkers in Congress.

That said, though, we do agree with our dynamic OpinYon colleague Ms. Liza Gazpar that there is indeed a need for government to focus on the continuing challenge of reproductive health, of preventing abortions, and so on; but again, I maintain that this shouldn’t be before other life-and-death priorities such as support for MRT/LRT fares, rice production, funds for deadly diseases ranging from TB to dengue, and a program (and budget) for the re-industrialization of the national economy, among many others.

Finally, let me issue this challenge to the Inquirer, which is really pushing the RH bill, and its pro-RH columnists, Conrado de Quiros, Raul Pangalangan, Rina Jimenez-David, Jesuit Joaquin Bernas and other comers, to debate the issues--them against my solo self, anywhere, anytime, so long as it is in public. My cable TV show is open to them.

(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “More Power Scams”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)