The SONA: Goodies galore / The Wallace prognosis

It was not a State of the Nation Address. Not by a long shot. It was a State of the Economy speech, very short of a statesman’s historic lightning and thunder, long on pledges and promises. And so it came to pass that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo finally put her stamp on her presidency Monday in a 66-minute discourse that eschewed eloquence and instead drew a detailed one-year road map aimed principally at alleviating poverty. You knew at once the president was an economist, setting up targets and schedules on jobs, housing, food, and beyond, a "modernized agriculture."

Yet the irony of it all, as GMA brought her presidency to bear on poverty, her audience, the impoverished, labor and peasant unions were staging a spirited rally outside the halls of Congress against her administration. She was excoriated as anti-poor, pro-business, pro-globalization, a trusted ally of Western capitalism, the multinationals, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Group of Eight whose summit meeting in Genoa came a cropper because of massive protests and riots waged by anti-globalist forces.

I wouldn’t go that far. I’ll just say that GMA might have promised too much at a time the Philippines is near broke. Her critics say the funds are just not there, that the economic earth is parched, that the national budget deficit could go beyond P150 billion, the hoped-for rain of investments is a pipe-dream. That was cute, the trundling out of three Payatas urchins, Jomar, Jason and Irwin — the face of grinding poverty who sought GMA’s help and got it. It was Mang Pandoy revisited, his age cut down by two generations.

While we are not joining the conga line to praise GMA, we nonetheless wish her well.

But three things. She asked for the impossible when she sought a one-year moratorium on political strife and "bickering" and for the nation to unite. No, Ma’m, political debate and discussion — no matter how bitter and partisan — are the essence of democracy. It was such prolonged debate and discussion in the United States that brought about the abolition of slavery, that led to the war of independence from Britain, that set up the armature of the welfare state, that led to the libertarian ethos enabling America to open wide its doors to all immigrants. It was such impassioned debate and discussion that produced the critical mass that was EDSA II which toppled the scandal-ridden Estrada administration. Earlier Ferdinand Marcos.

Another thing. President Arroyo merely skirted the issue of galloping crime, vented her ire only on the Abu Sayyaf, little realizing she had to war on graft and corruption, kidnap for ransom and salvaging, and that she had to go after the killers (for example of Bubby Dacer and Edgardo Bentain). If she doesn’t, if on top of that she seeks to stifle the crusade against crime by reaching out to blackguards in the opposition, then she will never achieve political stability. They are Siamese twins — political stability and economic recovery. Speedy crackdown on crime is a must for GMA. Otherwise, she stands accused of not having any moral bedrock. She must have noticed she got her strongest ovation when she pledged to prosecute the plunder and other cases against Erap Estrada to the fullest. She did not expect this.

The third thing. GMA must learn statecraft. This was utterly missing in her SONA. This is the blending of the heart and the head, the prescience, the instincts, the grasp of a heaving political and social sea, knowing when a wave is about to form, riding that wave, giving it meaning and symbol, communicating its roar to the public at large, and then standing tall and unafraid, as it crashes on shore. Gloria has, of course, improved a lot from the time in 1997 when Maria Montelibano and myself trained her in the art of top-level public speaking because at that time she was running for the presidency. She had not yet shed off her Nora Aunor image.

Six months into the presidency, she has yet a lot to learn. Oftentimes, she is seemingly the captive of her advisers, her cordon sanitaire, because she gropes, she is unsure of herself. You can see light and shadows chasing each other across her face, which she tries to suppress by smiling. Her dormitory of a smile.

Some people have commented that this columnist is no longer so tough on GMA as he had been for some years. Yes, that’s true. La Gloria is into one of the most turbulent periods in our history. She needs help and understanding, and woe unto all of us if the military should ever get it into its head — when the lights flicker or go off — to seize power.

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Peter Wallace’s well-received and well publicized prognosis on what ails the Philippines goes a long way in casting illumination on why we are Asia’s laggard today — but to my mind he missed the essentials. Primo, he hardly touched on the Philippines’ culture — actually the big villain — although he did say Filipinos "must develop a sense of national pride and doing things for society, not for the individual." Secundo, he skipped an analysis of our political system, an unpardonable oversight for a political and economic expert who mans the prestigious Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) operating here.

His figures are, however, stark naked without even the cover of a fig leaf.

The Philippines has only averaged a GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth of 3.1 percent over the past 25 years, compared to China’s 9.7, South Korea’s 7.8, Singapore’s 7.7, Malaysia’s 6.8, Thailand’s 6.5. Another table titled "Net Foreign Investment" in US$B has the Philippines trailing badly for the years 1998, 1999, 2000. Last year alone, China led the pack with $35.8 billion, followed by Singapore $4.5 billion, South Korea $3.5 billion, Thailand $3.0 billion, India $2.4 billion, Indonesia $1.5 billion, Philippines $1.1 billion.

If for these two tables alone, Peter Wallace should have plunged his knife deep like a surgeon carving out the bottom rot. He should have easily discovered (1) Philippine culture was not congenial to Western-type or Asian dragon-type economic progress for a number of reasons, among them a dominant religion traditionally hostile to material prosperity and a fiesta-loving people often given to fun and frolic; (2) a Philippine variant of democracy that hardly ever looked ahead, that had the stamp of mañana, bahala na, relying mostly on "survival values" based largely on the extended family. Never really nation-structured.

Wallace spots the problems and issues easily — lack of education, uncontrolled population growth, corruption, lack of infrastructure, antiquated agriculture, job creation, the court system and so on. But at each pit stop, he does not offer solutions. He says what we all know that "the bedrock of any democratic society is a justice system that is fair, swift and impartial. Deciding only on the facts. The Philippine court system is, it would seem, far from this." On antiquated agriculture, he states the biggest deterrent to agricultural efficiency is land reform. Of course it is, we all know that. We also know there is lack of "political will".

But, Wallace stops there. It is possible that being a foreigner, an Australian who nevertheless loves the Philippines, and a businessman long-time resident here, he may be pulling his punches. For if he says as James Fallows once did, that the Philippines has a "damaged culture" driving them to pursue "their own interests to the ruination of others", Peter would be laying himself wide open to charges of racial prejudice. I remember many years ago when I took up the cudgels for Fallows’ damaged culture theory, I got pummeled from brow to beltline by my fellow Filipinos. Now they seem to agree our culture is indeed damaged.

Mr. Wallace too has not bothered to stop and reflect whether our culture is congenial to the progress of democracy as a political system that rules — theoretically, anyway — every facet of our lives.

For democracy to succeed anywhere in the world, it has to ride the horse of economic progress. The Confucian or post-Confucian countries of East Asia have achieved unprecedented, rapid and stunning economic progress without a democratic system of government. We notice as they progress, as they achieve per capita incomes approximating those of the US, Japan and the Western world, they foster an increasingly large and highly educated middle class that could soon or shortly embrace a democratic carapace strengthened by the rule of law. Economic progress is the key.

Our experience in the Philippines has been the opposite.

The Americans transplanted the "institutions" of democracy — elections, an executive, a Congress and a judiciary — hoping eventually they would take deep root. They didn’t. Why? Because economic progress did not go in stride. Because our culture was a barrier. It doesn’t mean we are hopeless. It simply means we need more shocks to wake us up as a people.

Is ours a typical case of democracy without development?

When we look closely at Jamaica in the Carribean — as we did at Latin and South America in recent columns — we find out the Philippines is in their loop. Democracy without development. Can we make the leap to a successful capitalist economy? Can we, Peter Wallace?