Weekly Brief
The three most important initiatives required to pull the Philippines out of its primitive state are now on their launching pads.
In review and in prospect
With an administration now enjoying an unprecedented mandate to lead and govern in power, a rare window of opportunity has opened to make the hard decisions required to put the Philippines back on the path to modernisation. The three most important ones seem to have already kicked off:
(1) Deprive the communists of their ability to wage their terrorist “revolution”
Shutting down their propaganda sites and miring their relatively mainstream allies (such as, thanks to former president Rodrigo Duterte, in the case Rappler) in legal paperwork is a start. It helps that only one of their lot, Risa Hontiveros, bagged a Senate seat in these recently concluded elections. There is more that hopefully will get done surrounding this long-festered issue over the first 100 days of President Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr's presidency. Beefing up the Philippine military and police, rounding up New People's Army terrorists, and purging university campuses of their infiltrators would be most welcome to a public weary of these crooks.
(2) Re-evaluate the medium of instruction in Philippine educational institutions
The debate surrounding the use of Tagalog as a medium for instruction has been re-ignited. In an increasingly competitive world, Filipinos cannot afford to have their access to much-needed scientific and technological expertise hobbled by a dialect (made out to be the “national language”) that is woefully ill-equipped to serve as an efficient medium to transfer this knowledge. How, after all, can the concept of efficiency, for example, be explained in Tagalog?
(3) A return to self-sufficiency
The Philippines had become pathetically economically dependent over the last several decades thanks to successive administrations friendly to rich Western nations that sought to assuage their need for markets to dump their surpluses onto. The Philippines is one such market — inept at producing stuff, addicted to the low-hanging fruit of labour export, engulfed by retail industries that harvest the crop of those exports by selling imported stuff, and starved for foreign capital that it is hopeless at creating domestically at scale.
This is the economy that is enjoyed only by an elite subset of Philippine society; a subset the population of which seems proportionate to the vote attracted by the elitist campaign of the Philippine Opposition this year. If this group was indeed represented by this camp and the status quo it sought to protect, then this insight goes far in highlighting what the current administration's reform agenda for the economy ought to be.
An economy that is self sufficient necessarily relies on domestic producers for a reasonable proportion of its needs. Furthermore, a long-obvious sustainability issue underlies the excessive foreign trade of the “globalisation” espoused by Western societies. Freight transport is a large contributor to greenhouse gases. Supply chains hooked on unnecessary transport of goods over large distances belch gases that are warming the planet. A resource rich country such as the Philippines does not need such sorts of supply chains.
* * *
Much needs to be done and focus is vital. Tuning out noise and prioritising the voices of people and communities keen to work with the government and the people who support its aims is the immediate call to action in these early days. For now, it is the end of politics. The Opposition had been decimated and leaders and representatives that collectively enjoy a massive mandate to govern is in power. Time to build a nation.
Last week's blog posts
Mass media exist to serve Filipinos, not indulge their fantasy entitlement to “press freedom”
July 3, 2022 by benign0
"Small surprise that none of what constitutes the 'plight' of embattled media organisations like Rappler, Bulatlat, and Pinoy Weekly today resonates with the broader public. They’ve essentially made themselves irrelevant..."
Inflation, interest rates, and foreign exchange: Media must get their economics right
June 30, 2022 by The Unpopular Opinion
"However, with a highly globalized and interconnected Philippines, which depends on foreign remittances and imported hydrocarbons, it is nearly impossible to create a country that will be immune to the whims of the global market short of going the way of pariah nation-states like North Korea..."
Acting DPWH Sec. Oging Mercado Booted Ahead of BBM’s June 30 Inauguration
June 28, 2022 by Paul Farol
"Word is that Mercado had counted on his Romualdez connections to assure that he would get designated or appointed by the Marcos Junior administration as the DPWH Secretary."