Opinion
MONDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2017
A5
A brewing political storm THERE is a perfect political storm brewing. It is a plot by sinister forces to topple the President. The “yellows” or the past Aquino administration are allegedly behind the oust-Duterte move, according to the President’s loyal defenders of Cabinet members. President Rodrigo Duterte only has himself to blame. He fanned the flames of discontent with his confrontational and divisive style of governance. From Day One when he assumed the presidency, he started attacking almost everyone and every institution that’s not to his liking. He started with former US President Barack Obama whom he called “a son of a whore.” Duterte lashed out at the United Nations, the European Union, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. He is also weakening the very institutions he’s supposed to protect like the Commission on Human Rights, Supreme Court
and the Office of the Ombudsman. Granted that Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales and CHR chief Chito Gascon criticized the government’s brutal war on drugs and the alleged extrajudicial killing of suspects, that is not reason enough to do a demolition job on them. Duterte had some choice words for Gascon whom he called a pedophile for taking up the cudgels for young drug suspects killed by the police. This is the President of the Republic? Duterte’s image has gotten so bad because his mouth is a fountainhead of expletives and profanities. It’s not yet too late to shift gears and change the presidential style. Nothing would be lost except for pride. Humility to admit mistakes is actually a virtue and Filipinos are, by nature, forgiving. The President reiterated his dare to CJ Sereno and Ombudsman Carpio Morales to resign with him even as the two had already said they won’t. That leaves only Duterte willing to quit. Will he prove to the two ladies he means what he says by resigning first?
The term of Ombudsman Morales is only up to the middle of next year. CJ Sereno , on the other hand, can always be appointed by Duterte’s successor to a post befitting her stature. The two would be doing the country a great service with their sacrifice if they take up Duterte’s challenge for all three of them to resign. But going back to the brewing political storm, it is Malacanang which keeps claiming that there is a destablization conspiracy against him. Instead of talking about it, nip this plot in the bud and hold those behind it under arrest. Otherwise, it would be prudent to investigate the matter quietly until enough evidence is gathered by military intelligence officials who, by the way, do not believe the destab plot. There are loose talks some members of the military are involved in the plot. The military actually don’t have to do anything against the President. As shown in the People Power uprising against former Presidents Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada, the military did not have to do anything except withdrew its support from the Chief Executive.
A recent Social Weather Stations survey showed nine out of 10 Filipinos do not believe drug suspects killed during police operations resisted arrest and fought back. The impunity of extra judicial killings could be another ingredient to the brewing unrest among the populace. So far, the estimated number of EJK victims, according to unofficial sources, has reached 4,000. That is more than the total number of casualties on both sides in the four-month Marawi war. The daily breakdown of the Metro Rail Transit and the inconvenience suffered by commuters could be another factor in the build-up of the social volcano. Unemployment and impoverished families are crying out for government solutions. The government, however, is more preoccupied with the politics of punitive action against opponents and critics even as the country is unraveling at the seams. Most disconcerting to the people is the Duterte administration’s “embrace the enemy” approach to China’s continuing intrusion into the West Philippine Sea. Naval surveillance reported Chinese warships in
Philippine waters. Chinese Ambassador to Manila Ziao Jinhua dispelled the report claiming these are fishing vessels and nothing to be alarmed about. Whether they are warships or fishing vessels, they have no right to be in our waters. As if it could appease Filipinos over this latest violation of our sovereignty, China donated some 3,000 rifles to the Philippine military for its fight against the ISIS supported Maute terrorist group. Who was it who said “beware the Greeks bearing gifts?” The quote is a reference to how Troy fell for accepting a Trojan Horse, unaware enemy soldiers were hidden inside the huge wooden war trophy. The factors I mentioned for the making of a political storm exist and could catalyze citizens into action. It is not fake news that I might be accused of fomenting. It is Malacañang after all which is saying there is a destabilization plot to topple the President. If indeed there a plot to unseat President Duterte, he can still defuse the political tempest before he is overwhelmed by the confluence of events.
A People’s Choice guide to the Economics Nobel By Cass Sunstein BECAUSE economics is such a diverse field, with many distinguished thinkers, predicting the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics is notoriously difficult. But suppose that we narrowed the field, so as to focus on candidates who have not only made important theoretical contributions, but have also had a significant impact on the world, and affected the lives of numerous people? If that is the standard, here are some leading contenders for the prize, which is to be announced on Monday: Esther Duflo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Governments are keenly interested in the actual effects of their interventions, but they often lack tools to establish what works and what doesn’t. Building on work in medicine and related fields, Duflo has pioneered the use of randomized
Tourism... From A4
Just as most other cities of Taiwan, including its resort areas, have been feeling the pinch, better yet, the cut, because cross-strait relations have become rather anxious. When we checked in, which was at lunchtime, I noticed that the huge dining hall where buffet lunch was served daily was almost empty. Not that they have scrimped on the food offerings, these were as scrumptious as always before. Signs of the times, I thought. But as we came back later in the night, after a round of business meetings, I noticed the long lines at the reception counters. It was going to be a long weekend, a four-day holiday from Oct. 7 to 10, to celebrate the Double Ten National Day, commemorating the victory of the Chinese revolt against the Qing Dynasty. Taking a late breakfast at nine the following morning, I had to await my turn to
Am I... From A4
Its consequence was the Holocaust. The terrorists who flew passenger planes into the Twin Towers maintained the intransigent opinion that the West was hopelessly ungodly and perverse, and left a story of horror that will forever be etched not only in American
controlled trials. One group of people serve as a control; another group, otherwise identical, is subjected to a policy intervention, designed to reduce disease, increase access to loans, reduce poverty or improve education. If the trials are done properly, they can be used isolate the actual effects of the intervention. That’s huge progress. In recent work, Duflo argues that an economist can be a plumber: “She installs the machine in the real world, carefully watches what happens, and then tinkers as needed.” Richard Posner, University of Chicago. Recently retired from the federal bench, Posner is the leading thinker behind the field of law and economics, which tries to analyze legal rules with the help of economic tools. Suppose that a local government imposes a rent control law, or that a state court strikes down
certain contracts as “unconscionable” because they are unfair to poor people. What are the likely effects? Whether the issue involves William Nordhaus, Yale University. The problem of climate change raises unusually difficult problems for economists, not least because of high levels of uncertainty about the likely effects, tough questions about how to turn those effects into monetary equivalents, and serious challenges, at the intersection of economics and philosophy, about how to deal with harm to future generations. More than anyone else, Nordhaus has produced disciplined, rigorous and luminously clear thinking about all of these questions, in a way that is transparent about underlying assumptions and that makes real progress on, and possibly even solves, some seemingly intractable problems. W. Kip Viscusi, Vanderbilt
University. Viscusi is rarely listed among Nobel candidates, but his work on the monetary valuation of risks to life and health has had a massive effect. In the US alone, it plays a major role in the work of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services. These agencies and many others build on Viscusi’s work on the “value of a statistical life.” Viscusi does not really ask what a life is worth; he is interested in the value of statistical risks. If, for example, workers face Richard H. Thaler, University of Chicago. Over recent decades, the rise of behavioral economics has been the most interesting development in economic theory. More than anyone else, Thaler has been responsible for that development.
He has shown that in concrete ways, people do not act as predicted by standard economic theory. Far from seeing money as fungible, people put their cash in separate “mental accounts” (mortgage money, vacation money, retirement money). Investors overreact to unexpected news events. Human beings care about fairness—and they are willing to pay something to punish people who have been unfair. People are planners as well as doers, and when they are planning, they might try to foil their own doing (as, for example, by keeping high-calorie foods out of the house). Economics is called “the dismal science,” and since the Great Recession, the field has taken a beating in the public eye. Sure, some of the research of those listed here has produced dismal news —but it has also helped make the world a much better place. Bloomberg
be seated, as the breakfast buffet hall was packed to the rafters, mostly by families. But the service was brisk, and I noticed how families quickly left after their breakfast, mindful that many were queuing up for their turn. Speaking to the manager later, he told me that the hotel was at 85% capacity, and the visitors were almost completely “domestic” tourists. “We get by with strong domestic demand,” of course, at promotional rates, he intimated. When the foreign visitor arrivals decline, they keep their noses above water by enticing domestic tourism through attractive packages. No wonder my companions and I got a slew of discount coupons in their entertainment complex cum shopping malls along with our room key. That’s until Tuesday, when the Taiwanese families drive back or fly back to work. But it gives the huge investment in the privately owned tourism infrastructure relief from the
“drought” in mainland travel traffic. The story of the Kaohsiung hotel is replicated in many other areas of Taiwan, whether in the awesome Taroko Gorge area, or in Hualien, Yilan, Taitung, the Sun-Moon Lake in Nantou and elsewhere in this beautiful and well-kept island. But because local purchasing power is adequate, and there is enough disposable incomes to fuel domestic tourism, the travel industry is able to plod on. Government is responding as well, trying to attract more tourists from the non-traditional markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines, through visafree enticements. Inbound Philippine tourism to Taiwan, even without the visa-free announcement (which is yet to be operationalized) has grown by almost 73% yearon-year. But because there was a huge building spree of hotels
and restaurants during the happy days of mainland Chinese arrivals, the tourism industry here is now in some kind of crisis. The lifeline is provided by domestic tourism. There is a lesson here for our own travel industry, for both the public and private sectors in Philippine tourism to well consider. We have a woeful lack of hotel and resort facilities to service the growing influx of tourists from mainland China and Korea, among others. But the drawback is that our existing hotels and resorts charge an arm and a leg, so that even domestic tourists, who should be the mainstay of our tourism industry during the “lean months” and proverbial “bad times,” are repulsed. “Cheaper to go to Hong Kong, or Siem Reap, or Taiwan”, our compatriots keep saying. Indeed, when a pop-band once visited the country last year, many Filipinos preferred to go to Taiwan, where the same band had a concert. Why? The cost of
travel, hotel and plane fare included, plus the ringside concert ticket, was just a tad higher than what the concert impresario in the Philippines charged for just the ticket. The Taiwanese cut their rates and came up with a package to attract foreigners, all tied up to the popular concert. “Naka-libre ka pa ng biyahe at dalawang tulog”, a Filipino visitor told one of my staff during the concert. So he and his family added two more nights in Taipei on top of the tour package. Tourism management is a complex thing, but the economic rewards and the multiplier effect can be quite enormous. It’s just a mix of the right strategy, creative marketing, adequate infrastructure, good publicprivate partnerships, and taking the long view instead of the get-rich-quick culture that has always been the bane of Philippine business culture. And, never forget, the domestic traveller, especially the millennials who are more adventurous, more travel enthusiastic than ever before.
but in human history. And it will not do to say that opinions are fine, no matter how irrational, as long as one keeps them in the realm of thought and does nothing overt. This is unacceptable for two reasons: first, because thought never remains purely thought, especially when one’s opinions have to do with the fundamentals of coexistence; second, because
even thought has action— what discourse theorists have called “illocutionary force”. When you say: “I hope all drug addicts die”, you are performing the act of hoping. When you assert the proposition: “All Chinese are enemies of the Filipino people,” you are classing all Chinese as enemies. No, thoughts are not harmless at all—which is the reason that there can be no such thing as
a right to irrational thinking. In fact, even in regard to those matters such as taste and art and music of which the belief has long been accepted that there is no objective criterion, Gadamer is only one among many who have convincingly argued that utter subjectivism cannot be true. Even if a senior high school student who is an addict to rock or metal
has absolutely no liking for Chopin or Mozart, that will not make Chopin or Mozart any less “classical”, and if art were completely a matter of subjective taste, art criticism would be a completely thoughtless venture, and Michelangelo, Picasso and Monet would be no better than any sidestreet artist! If we all had the right to our opinions—no matter
Liberalize the economy SOCIOECONOMIC Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia last week promised that large swathes of the country’s economy—nearly all industries except land ownership— are to be opened up to foreign investors as early as 2019, a move that he predicted would “easily double” foreign direct investment, accelerating growth. The country’s chief economic manager said he expects Congress to finally amend relevant economic provisions in the Constitution, paving the way for largescale liberalization that could stimulate job creation and therefore promote inclusive growth. Despite vigorous attempts by all administrations dating back to Fidel Ramos in the 1990s, little has been actually done to change what many economists have concluded as restrictive constitutional provisions that had held back the Philippine economy while its neighbors had made great strides. A protectionist economy, they said, made little sense in the context of a globalized economic order and had been the culprit in the notoriously subpar volume of FDI inflows. The restricted climate, in turn, had effectively discouraged foreign capital, a lifeline when it comes to creating high-quality jobs for the country’s work force. The 1987 Constitution, the supreme law of the land, now needs to be reexamined to ensure its responsiveness to the changing world. Enacted at a very different time, the charter presupposes conditions that may not be as relevant today, some three decades on. Attempts to change the Constitution have been hounded as much by the wisdom of the proposed amendments as the mode of amendment or assumed motive behind the push. In either case, the Filipino loses. In particular, the economic provisions Our legislators of the 1987 Charter aims to achieve must move fast economic sovereignty on systemic, and prosperity for Filipinos, abiding by a long-overdue broad nationalist policy reforms. foremost of which are strong economic restrictions against foreign investment. It wasn’t long before some realized that it was the same restrictions, one of the most protectionist in the world, that has hampered the country’s growth and potential. The 40-percent cap in foreign equity, to many, explains why the country’s FDI lags behind parallel economies in the region (highlighted by a miserable 1.5-percent drop between 2014 and 2015). For perspective, Vietnam, which only opened up its economy 10 or so years ago, boasts of double the Philippines’ FDI (and a 28-percent growth in the same period). Republic Act No 7042—or the Foreign Investment Act of 1991—had sought to allow 100 percent foreign equity except for two overriding exceptions, and the periodic reassessment only liberalized a few areas of the economy: casino, retail trade, lending, and financial companies. In particular, the Constitution mandates a 40-percent cap for foreign investments in the operation of public utilities, some educational institutions, as well as foreignled exploration, development and utilization of natural resources. The $200,000 minimum capital requirements for foreign investors—$2.5 million for foreign retailers— is also seen by some as prohibitive, and should be relaxed, if not lifted altogether. The rationale behind liberalization is thus two-fold. More investments would ideally translate to more jobs, while increased competition would yield to higher quality of goods and services. Pernia said President Rodrigo Duterte had been asked to certify the proposed amendments as urgent, which also included the method of such change via an appointed constitutional commission. In a Con-Con or a Con-Ass, the proposed revisions must be ratified by a majority of votes cast in a plebiscite conducted not earlier than 60 days or later than 90 days after the approval of the proposed revisions. It’s certainly a long process, and longer still considering all attempts in the past to make the long-overdue change. As time is of the essence, the formation of a Constitutional Assembly seems to be the most apt; Congress, as composed of elected legislative officials, already satisfy the representation requirement, and the plebiscite would serve as a check and balance, a final arbiter. Thus, while the fundamental need to lift foreign equity restrictions in the 1987 Charter, the matter of choosing the best method to make this change possible is also necessary, and convening a Constitutional Assembly seems practical. To quote think tank Stratbase ADR Institute, “Foreign equity restrictions found in the Constitution should be lifted and the most practicable way to amend the Constitution is by way of Constitutional Assembly”. This drastic move—combined with the Duterte administration’s ambitious infrastructure initiative and young, dynamic workforce—will greatly alter the economic future of the Philippines. For generations we have known that there is untapped potential in the Filipino peoples’ talent and work ethic. To harness the potential of the country’s “demographic sweet spot” our legislators must move fast on systemic, long-overdue reforms.
that they are clearly shown us to be false, perverse, specious, unreasonable —that would make all further rational consensus impossible, because rational consensus presupposes the responsibility whereby interlocutors and action participants, treating each others as equals, concede to the better reason and allow themselves to be won over by argument. But one who insists “I am entitled to my own opinion” will insist on his position even in the face of the better argument— and such intransigence
makes the settlement of disputes and the engendering of legitimacy from rational consensus impossible, leaving only one door open—strategic action. This cannot be a welcome prospect at all, because it means that he who has the power and the stealth, the might and the guile to prevail shall prevail, no matter that his beliefs might fill us with revulsion! rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph rannie_aquino@outlook.com