Delusional talk

 

 

Speaking before the general commencement exercises of the University of the Philippines for its Class of 2013, Senator Edgardo Angara, also a former president of the university, told the graduates that they belong to the middle class that “is emerging as a potent force in the Philippines’ social transformation.” Angara compared the young graduates to the ilustrados of the Spanish colonial period who spearheaded the failed reform movement for a more equitable role of Filipinos in the political and economic life of the colony.  

Of course, it’s a historical myth to liken the middle class to the ilustrados of the 1800s. These ilustrados represented the highest class in the Philippine social system at that time. Together with the lower class called the taos, both the ilustrados and the taos comprised the entire social spectrum. There was no middle ground during the Spanish colonial times, either one belonged to the rich upper class or the poor lower class. 





Filipino ilustrados in Madrid during the Spanish colonial period. Photo courtesy
 of Wikipedia Commons. Click link to view Protest Action at UP Graduation 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=883zqRBGOfo

The taos were peasants and were in greater number, while the ilustrados or caciques as they were sometimes called were large landowners or persons of influence. They were small in number, well-educated and cultured, thus they comprised the ruling class. Dante Simbulan called this class the principalia which was the origin of the present-day oligarchic elite in the Philippines.

 

The concept of the middle class is a latter-day phenomenon although it was historically referred to in the past as the bourgeoisie that was responsible for the success of the French and American revolutions. In contrast, the socialist revolutions in Russia and China were not led by the bourgeoisie although their leaders were intellectuals from this class who forged ranks with the masses of workers and peasants. While today’s liberation movements, like the wars in Algeria and Vietnam and in other parts of the world could also be considered revolutions in the popular sense, they are not necessarily bourgeois in nature and origin. The recent Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were hastened by street demonstrations of disgruntled youth, students and ordinary citizens, not by the middle class.

 

Perhaps, Senator Angara was talking tongue in cheek when he graciously described the UP Class of 2013 as part of the new middle class that could be harnessed in the social transformation of the Philippines. The reference to “social transformation” seems an obvious attempt to dissociate it from the 1896 Revolution, a radical and an armed struggle that took over the reform movement.

 

In talking about “a strong middle class as the backbone of civil society,” Senator Angara refers to this class as “the voice of reason that moderates vested interests, the force of change that compels societies to invest in their own future.” This sounds like a line lifted from the political platforms of American political parties which both stress the vital importance of the middle class in responsible political governance and in promoting economic growth.

 

Senator Angara’s middle class, however, is about as American as apple pie: a comfortable standard of living, significant economic security, considerable work autonomy, and with a college education that helps to sustain themselves. But the American middle class is not the same middle class we find in other economies or cultures, especially those which are poorer or backward. So, all this talk about creating the middle class patterned after the American model is only as aspirational as a fairy-tale dream.  

Philippines' poverty map. Graphic courtesy of Emil Mercado, rappler.com. Click
link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOcua4apIlY to view NCSB: Poverty
Incidence Almost Unchanged.

This is like the kind of surprise President Noynoy Aquino elicited when reality strikes you on the face. To the president’s chagrin, his own bureaucrats, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), reported that the poverty incidence in the Philippines stood at 27.9 percent in the first semester of 2012, practically unchanged from the same period in 2009, which was 28.6 percent, and in 2006 which was 28.8 percent. They must be referring to old population data, not 2012, the president could only gripe. President Aquino must be wondering as to what happened to the high credit ratings the Standard & Poor, Fitch Ratings, and Moody’s Analytics recently gave the Philippines, which all pointed to a robust economic growth in 2014. Or to the president’s much-ballyhooed Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program which he was hoping would rescue the poor from their misery.

 

Is it a paradox that poverty in the Philippines continues despite high expectations of economic growth?

 

There is really no paradox. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a liberal economic institution, “the benefits of strong economic growth have not spilled over to the people because they still cannot find a job.” The country’s rate of unemployment stood at 7.1 percent in January 2013, with a further 20.9 percent underemployed or those working fewer than 40 hours a week. About 41.8 percent of the underemployed are in the farming sector. Norio Usui, ADB senior country economist, said that the government must solve the problem of jobless growth if it hoped to reduce poverty.

 

This also means that only the rich and the educated have benefited from growth the economy is experiencing and not the poor and uneducated, which also explains why there is a pervasive income inequality between the haves and the have-nots.

 

Similarly, President Aquino’s flagship anti-poverty initiative, the CCT Program wasn’t also enough to significantly mitigate income inequality in the first semester of 2012. Because the CCT budget accounted for only 25 percent of the amount needed to eradicate poverty, the NCSB said. Besides, with the corrupt nature of pork barrel politics, it is highly likely that the money could have been shifted around instead of spending it for the alleviation of the targeted poor.

 

The model of economic growth that the present government adopted depended on increased levels of consumption, strong remittances from the country’s large overseas workforce, and the outsourcing industry which the Philippines is currently number one in the world. Half or even more of the UP 2013 graduating class, the new members of the middle class as Senator Angara would like to call them, will probably join the growing outsourcing industry which employs highly educated workers, if they don’t migrate to work or settle overseas.

 

The Philippines has a weak industrial base compared to the other economies in the region. Without durable industrialization, highly educated college graduates or even high school graduates will not be able to get jobs. Their only choice is either to become underemployed as call-centre workers or go overseas as part of the contingent of the country’s cheap exploitable labour.

 

National industrialization is one of the key issues that the National Democratic Front, the umbrella group for communist organizations, has been insisting to be on the peace negotiations table with the government panel. Edwin Lacierda, President Aquino’s spokesperson, said the problem with the NDF is it continues to use ideas that had become passé, such as “national industrialization,” which makes negotiations for peace impossible.

 

“National industrialization? I mean, we’ve moved on. They seemed to have not moved on. So how does one talk in a present setting with people who are still in the ’50s or in the ’60s perspective?” Lacierda asked.

 

Perhaps, President Aquino and the staff that surrounds and protects him, including our politicians like Senator Angara, should go on a retreat for some serious soul-searching. The country will never be able to gain a significant headway in attempting to solve its economic and social problems if our elected leaders and their coterie of experts continue to ignore realities that their own bureaucrats and other respected institutions have objectively identified.

 

It is not enough that the country is favourably regarded by international credit rating agencies. High ratings are not the true measure of a country’s economic performance if the growth in the economy does not trickle down to the benefit of the greater majority of the population. The outsourcing industry is not a real industrial boon that would spur an increase in jobs, beyond the minimal expansion in consumption patterns of those employed in this sector.

 

Senator Angara in his speech before the UP Class of 2013 called on the new graduates to take advantage of a nascent Asian regional economy that would allow the Philippines “to finance our own growth from our people’s own savings, without having to levy new taxes or borrow from other nations’ savings. We can build schools and hospitals, roads and bridges from our own pockets—investments for the people, by the people.” This is the rising middle class, he said.

 

Talk is really cheap, especially if it is not reflective of reality, historical and present, and the actual choices the people must confront. It’s probably time for our leaders in government not just to think outside the box, but perhaps by going beyond and away from their traditional mindsets.

Then and now

 

 

In an earlier blog, I made a reference to a quote attributed to Philippine Senator Miriam Santiago that majority of Filipinos are “not educated for voting.” Senator Santiago gave the example of movie stars getting elected in Congress because of the “ignorance of the Filipino electorate.” She probably spoke the truth.

 

With the pervasiveness of poverty in the Philippines, it’s not unimaginable that more than a majority of the Philippine population have actually attained a level of literacy that would enable every Filipino to vote without being told what to do. However, the lady senator obviously forgot that there is a historical explanation for this conundrum of the Filipino masses not educated for voting.

U.S. Governor-General William Howard Taft addressing the  First Philippine
Assembly in  1907. Photo from Wikipedia Commons.

In an article, “The Philippine Muddle,” for Harper’s Magazine in 1926, William Howard Gardiner, who also worked as a consultant to the U.S. Navy and State Departments, wrote that mostly Chinese and Spanish mestizos were able to absorb the new emphasis on English, academics and American political history in the school curriculum at the time. The great masses, the common tao, who were children of peasants, virtually were left out uneducated and uninstructed in anything that would help them live their peasant lives more effectively. Among the more ambitious mestizo children, the aim was simply to get a “distinguishing diploma rather than a useful education; to be freed from future work rather than to be better equipped to work.” From this half-educated class of mestizos would rise what would locally be known as ilustrados, “whose one ambition is to be, first, political henchmen, and then affluent leaders.”

 

These mestizo politicos would eventually lord over the wretched millions of ordinary people who were ruthlessly exploited and forced to be absolutely subservient. Assisted by politically-appointed justices of the peace and fiscals, or magistrates and prosecuting attorneys, these mestizo politicos would hold the common folk in servile bondage, while the chief politico in each barrio would tell them how to vote. While it was the result of natural mestizo cupidity, Gardiner wrote that “it has been possible only because of the political incapacity of the tao millions and because of American neglect and ignorance of Philippine conditions. But as the power to prevent or to correct is ours, we Americans and not the natives, whether politicos or taos, are at fault.”

 

That early on, the great masses of Filipinos were deprived by an educational system that was geared mostly for the members of the upper social class. This pattern continued as the ilustrados became more politically and economically powerful. Election as the hallmark of democratic politics became the monopoly of the wealthy elite and their families. No wonder that Filipinos today are not educated for voting.

 

Quite contrary to the thinking of Conrado de Quiros, a columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, universal suffrage unhampered by the lack of education did not really amount to reforms or change in government or in society at large. Had the right to vote been limited to those who have education, de Quiros writes that “wealth and power would have remained with the landowners, the slave-owners, the gun-owners, the caciques, the compradors, the owners of fabricas and companias, with no end in sight.”

 

Mr. de Quiros is in denial of the great promise of democratic elections. The only change elections have brought was the circus of personalities playing musical chairs, a perpetual cycle of rotation of elective public officials among members of political dynasties. The material conditions of Philippine society never did change, the poor are still mired in poverty, and political power remains in the hands of the wealthy few.

Some members of the Philippine political elite. Click link to view "Political Dynasties in the
Philippines," http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=FXYK4fKlkIM



On the other hand, Senator Santiago is also equally and utterly wrong in belittling the lack of education that hinders the Filipino voter to choose wisely. Hers is an elitist position that echoes the contempt of the powerful over the misled masses. As a lawyer and a constitutionalist, Senator Santiago has forgotten that the Constitution she has faithfully sworn to uphold does not impose literacy, property or other limiting requirements on the exercise of suffrage. In fact, the Constitution mandates Congress to ensure that the disabled and illiterates can vote without the assistance of other persons.

 

Many of us Filipinos have been led to swallow hook, line and sinker that the United States was an altruistic colonizer. Gardiner’s article on the early years of American colonial administration in the Philippines is very informative, at least for two reasons: one, that the American Manifest Destiny to save the Philippines from its barbaric state was already failing at its earliest stage, and two, the American colonizers acquiesced in the creation of a native autocracy of mestizo politicos for their own particular profit, and it was America’s fault, not the natives, whether politicos or taos, in not preventing it. Instead of presiding over the evolution of a sound popular self-government, American colonial rule established the foundation for patronage politics which engendered the formation of oligarchic elites.

 

Gardiner’s prescription was to simply correct the political situation in the interest of the Philippine masses. First, he suggested to end the tragic farce of pseudo-popular self-government, then develop the material, first; second, the cultural; and finally, the political circumstances and capacities of the native population. The colonial administration of the Dutch East Indies made an impression on Gardiner. He had observed the orderly conduct of affairs, high state of development, and consequent contentment of the natives in the Dutch colonies which were in sharp contrast to the conditions in the Philippines, especially in view of their basic similarity and natural conditions.

 

But when the Jones Law, the organic law for the islands, was enacted by the U.S. Congress, a congressional system of government with separation of powers was transplanted on Philippine soil, an imitation of the American system without considering local conditions. With the establishment of the Philippine National Assembly, Filipinos were selected for their subservience to the chief politicos rather than their ability to serve. Such virtual control over every aspect of the government enabled the mestizo politicos to perpetuate their power over a politically-incompetent electorate.

 

What happened then is also happening now. After years of American tutelage in self-government, the Philippines is still attempting its best to acquire the material foundation and political maturity that are necessary for a real self-government to flourish. Successive Philippine governments and the Congress simply attempted to compromise the existing political conditions by adopting partially palliative measures, such as the 1987 Philippine Constitution which contains important democratic provisions like the party-list system of representation, the prohibition of political dynasties, and the people’s initiative to enact legislative reforms by referendum or plebiscite. But all these constitutional provisions remain nominal and aspirational at best without the operative and enabling legislation that would ensure the fulfilment of the purpose of the drafters of the Constitution. The reality is, the stranglehold of political power by the oligarchic elite is adequate insurance that such lofty purpose would never be achieved.

 

Senator Santiago may not be speaking in a time warp when she ridicules the Filipino masses for lacking the education to vote. Our political conditions in the past have not changed a bit, we have the same mestizo politicos like Senator Santiago and members of political dynasties whose glib assertiveness has entrenched them in our local autocracy. On the other hand, we also have people, especially politicians of the yellow kind, with the naiveté to continuously believe that our present leaders in government have already shattered the glass ceiling that excludes the masses from the political process.

Meet the Aquinos. The Aquino name crops up again and again in Philippine politics.
Benigno Aquino lll is the current president. His grandfather, Benigno S Aquino Sr,
was vice-president in the World War ll Japanese collaborationist government - his father
Benigno S. Aquino, Jr.  was a senator. He was assassinated in 1983 and his wife,
Corazon Aquino, became president in  1986. The current president's cousin, Bam
Aquino, is running for senator this time. Photo courtesy of AFP.

The horrible truth is time has probably stood still. From the colonial days to the present, Philippine politics continues to remain largely a preserve of the wealthy elite, with our present leaders in government being drawn from an entirely different economic class than the people they purport to represent.

 

Wealth above all shapes our political debate and determines its outcome, and special interests stand in the way of public policy and what is in the best interests of the people. No wonder we have voters not educated to make intelligent choices, for what is the point of it all when your voice doesn’t count.

 

PLEASE VIEW AND SIGN PETITION "POLITICAL DYNASTIES MUST END NOW" AT: http://www.change.org/petitions/end-political-dynasties-now