Things just get worse

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/28/2011



While mainstream media, politicians, lawyers, text addicts, and the man-on-the-street get sucked into a Gloria Arroyo-carping mindset, the situation on the ground just keeps getting worse. A new think tank that’s making its presence felt recently released some startling findings about the Philippines.

A report by Stratbase entitled, “Study traces poverty incidence to vested interests,” cited World Bank data showing the increase in the number of poverty-stricken Filipinos by 3.4 million between the years 2008 and 2009. Even worse, its comparison of growth rates in Asia showed how much of a basket case we are. It said that “while East Asian economies posted average annual GDP growth rates from 3.6 to 6.0 percent between 1960 and 2008, the Philippines only managed an annual average increase of 1.4 percent during the same period.”

But there’s more: While the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was said to have found “that for every one percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP), poverty incidence has gone down by an average of 1.5 percent across the world and two percent within Asia… poverty incidence in the Philippines had actually risen since 2003, a time when the economy (was) thought to have grown very well.”

Even with the modicum of growth the Philippines has supposedly gained, not only is its poverty incidence not been reduced — it is, in fact, growing. What this means is that we are doing even worse than Africa.

As I have always said, the Philippines is on course toward “Africanization,” i.e. becoming as poor as the poorest in Africa. But, it seems, we are now getting there even faster.

So who exactly are these “vested interests?” They are the “rent seekers” whom Stratbase says “attempt to derive ‘economic rent’ by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by adding value.” Even though it failed to provide specifics, it’s quite easy to glean that these rent seekers comprise the oligarchs who use their money powers to obtain concessions from government and/or take over state contracts and assets; politicians who use their positions to enrich themselves; media prostitutes who peddle information and opinion for a fee; as well as lawyers who answer to the highest bidder; and so on.

Notably, only a few choose not to be part of this rent seeking class. A fine example is eminent lawyer and constitutionalist Alan Paguia, who, despite being among the first to criticize the Department of Justice’s hold departure order, declined the offer to join the legal team of Gloria Arroyo, leaving his other compañeros to stumble over one another in hopping aboard the hospitalized lawmaker’s defense bandwagon.

Still, there is a very deep irony in Stratbase itself. While it indicts the vested interests or rent seekers, its officers and academic resources also have strong ties to these oligarchs or their intellectual hires.

Its chairman Jose Ibazeta, for example, was an Anscor (A. Soriano Corp.) president, as well as a director and treasurer of a known port management giant, and a chairman of state holding firm, Psalm (Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp.), which privatizes our country’s power assets to the oligarchs. Meanwhile, Antonio “Tony Boy” Cojuangco is a member of the board, along with Amboy Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario. Among its academic advisers are Calixto Chikiamco of the pro-privatization Foundation for Economic Freedom; Ayala adviser Randy David; and pro-USAid RH (Reproductive Health) bill law professor Raul Pangalangan.

In its prospectus, Stratbase says, “Our knowledge of the government and the ability to establish strategic communications network with policy and decision makers ensures that our client’s voices are heard.” Sounds like lobbying or rent seeking to me.

The Philippine ruling class that runs our society and political-economy today, of which Stratbase appears to be an epitome, is (in a real sense) fraudulent, self-seeking, parasitic, intellectually dishonest, hypocritical, and incompetent — as can be witnessed in all the raging debates about Mrs. Arroyo. Even as worse transgressions by the oligarchs and their foreign masters against our nation continue to escalate, all these are merely glossed over by such lofty campaigns against the “evils” of the past.

Good thing we still have a number of outstanding individuals who represent the interests of the vast silent majority. Paguia, for one, continues to shine a light in the legal arena; while others such as Mang Naro Lualhati, Jojo Borja, Butch Junia, Bono Adaza together with Sulo ng Pilipino, Bagong Katipuneros (Magdalos), PLM and others, continue to fight for several nationalistic causes. They certainly prove that, unlike the ruling class, not everybody is simply out for a buck.

But, while the people have yet to seize victory, things can only get worse. No, we’re not just speaking of political-economic decay but one that eats away at the spirit of man, too. With all the demoralization, im-moralization, doublespeak, obfuscation, scapegoatism, hypocrisy and idiocy around, under a supposed democracy where the economic life of the nation deteriorates while only a few monopolize it in greater and greater proportions, just how can one’s humanity be left untarnished?

As Mahatma Gandhi correctly pointed out, “Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are.”

True, some may continue to point the accusing finger — like the pot to the kettle — to hide their own corruption; but as long as there are Filipinos who won’t tolerate such hypocrisy, there’s hope that they can be brought together in a political movement that will oust the corrupt in our society in due time.

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