PADERANGA, ECONOMISTS: NOYNOY’S INTELLECTUAL PROSTITUTES

Prof. Erle Frayne D. Argonza

University of the Philippines

Good day from Manila! Magandang hapon!

I just intercepted a note that has been circulating via the email circuits, which echoes the endorsement by certain economists of moralistic leadership standards and the presidency of Noynoy Aquino. Let me share some notes about those economists, which I hope will induce some reflections on the readers and would-be voters.

You see, I felt the itch to burst with guffaws at the economist endorsers, but had to restrain myself as I was surfing inside a commercial cyber-shop. The immediate scorn and ridicule I felt for the economists who endorsed Noynoy was their nauseating projection of (a) independence of mind and (b) moral purity.

I could say this matter-of-factly, that those economist endorsers, led by Prof. Paderanga of the UP Diliman’s School of Economics (UPSE), is a coterie of intellectual prostitutes who are so at home with receiving  fat consultancy & analysts’ pay in exchange for enriching the purses of corporate carpetbaggers. Their independence is paid independence; their moral purity, delusional hogwash.

Those same economists have made no qualms in implementing the dictated policies of the IMF-World Bank that widened social inequalities and led to ballooned the poverty levels in the past, to note: (a) liberalization, (b) privatization, (c) deregulation, (d) tax reforms, (e) reduced budget for social services, (f) wage freeze (both private & public employees), (g) devaluation of the peso, and (g) increased prices of utilities.

Save for the NGO carpetbaggers (e.g. Men Sta. Ana & company who make money via fat funds flowing to their moderate Left NGOs), the Paderanga-led endorsers naturally sit in corporate boards as ‘independent directors’ (I feel like vomiting!). Well, since the energy & other sectors were deregulated, big biz players such as Mirant et al, came in and, believe it or not, appointed one to three of the so-called ‘independent directors’ –who now appear in the pro-Noynoy list of endorsers—to the corporate board of the former.

In the case of Sta. Ana & company (including social workers from the ‘soc-dems’ or non-Marxist social democrats), the carpetbag venues are those NGO coalitions where fat “juices” from debt swaps have been funneled in the past. There was the Peace Bonds racket, to recall, which initially amounted to a billion 1^st tranche, guaranteed by the Finance Department, hence making many involved experts blissfully happy from the 1990s to the present.

If you think Gov. Salceda is truly (a) independent-thinking and (b) morally pure, better review the facts. Salceda is implementing couples of Big Projects in his Albay backyard, thanks to his close affiliation with the incumbent president, worth P10 Billion more or less. He is a MASTER OF KABUSUGAN, as laymen would put it, and his greed has been moving up in exponential fashion. Besides, he was a most fatly paid marketing economist for the corporate world before he joined the GMA regime.

Inside the academe, the likes of Paderanga, Taguiwalo, and other professors, have hardly been known for doing research projects as a ‘labor of love’ thing. Being well connected to corporate and ODA paymasters, their researches and publications are deeply tainted with the vested interests of their financiers. [ODA= Official Development Assistance]

Having established their niches in their big-paying clientele—Big Business, Big Foundations, Big Banks, Big NGO networks, Global Development Agencies—it is but natural that those same morally puritanical economists put their foot forward in the Noynoy Team (they used their connections to leverage their getting into the team) and practically dictated the TOR (terms of reference). They were to join the Purissima faction of experts who were then with GMA, but who bolted away as early as 2005 yet.

Coming from different factions of experts, I could just surmise the great difficulty in getting them to draft the agenda of Noynoy Aquino who was catapulted to a presidential timber by sheer historical accidence. Surely enough, words reached my ears that the factions couldn’t see each other eye-to-eye, a truistic situation that bogged down the drafting of the agenda in late Sept to October of 2009.

The Paderanga faction was assigned the broad economic & development agenda, Taguiwalo faction the fiscal agenda, Purissima faction the budget agenda, Sta Ana & ‘progressive’ faction the social agenda, and so on. Pressed by time constraints to churn out an agenda, the highly paid Noynoy consultants did miraculously produce one that was the accompanying document submitted to the COMELEC attached to the certification registration of Noynoy Aquino.

Upon reviewing the Noynoy agenda of governance that was published in the major dailies, I was so aghast at the rather sub-standard quality of the content. It was a mere hodge-podge of motherhood statements, spiced up by cut & paste items lifted directly from the Philippine Constitution. Honestly, that draft agenda can be prepared by mere undergraduate students in the University of the Philippines, given a 1-day workshop time frame, while it took the economists two (2) months to accomplish it!

In contrast to those prostituted intellectuals and Masters of Kabusugan, we academics and think-tank consultants who support the likes of Villar (others support Gordon, Bro. Eddie,…) have openly endorsed our choice candidate on the basis of our advocacies. This expert is not being paid for my analytical writings, interviews, and forum talks supportive of the nationalists (Villar, NP…). And there are just too many of us nationalist and grassroots-working intellectuals who are contributing our share of the campaign through pro bono service.

To share an anecdote: A co-partner of mine in the consulting & academic world, Dr. Cesar Mercado (he heads an international think-tank, was former UN official, and is globally known), was offered by a graduate student of the UP SOLAIR a participation in the drafting of the Noynoy agenda. Dr. Mercado outrightly declined the offer, and he need not bother to call me up for the fat-paying consulting work in the Noynoy camp. He simply replied that he was busy.

That was how desperate the Noynoy Team was for a draft agenda, for Noynoy just didn’t possess the competence to draft one. In contrast, the other presidential candidates (Villar, Bro. Eddie, Nicki Perlas, Gordon…) already possessed analytical and practical frames that they developed throughout their careers, and so the role of consultants if ever was merely to critique, edit, incorporate methodology of implementation, and polish. The latter candidates don’t need to hire a huge coterie of experts like Noynoy and Erap did, but utilize merely 2-3 consults at the most.

Not being personally known to Villar, the likes of me and hundreds of experts (adaceme & think-tanks) have been expressing opinions based on our long-standing policy frameworks, advocacies, and ‘best practices’. We need not come together to release a public manifesto in the broadsheets, which will require at least P1.5 million for five half-paged pronouncements in five (5) dailies. We don’t have the funds to do so! So we campaign in the micro-niches, based on the personal resources within our means.

Lastly, hardly had Noynoy began campaigning, and those prostituted minds were already clawing on each other like competing crabs, as per reports reaching my attention. They will likewise claw on each other in grabbing juicy government sub-sectors and agency posts in case Noynoy wins, and will be stabbing each other to get the boss’ attention if ever they sit in power.

Let me toss the capsule query: are such intellectuals indeed independent-minded and morally pure? Are they worth leading the institutions of state for the sake of ‘walang korupsyon’ and/or good governance? Will a president Noynoy be on top of them, or will they be on top of puppet Noynoy?

[20 September 2010. Prof. Argonza is a political economist, sociologist, university professor, development consultant, self-development guru. See: UNLADTAU: https://unladtau.wordpress.com, IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogger.com, BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com%5D

LIBERALISM: MORE POVERTY & CORRUPTION

Prof. Erle Frayne D. Argonza

University of the Philippines

 

Good afternoon, fellows!

The Liberal Party in the Philippines has been bandying lately the good governance agenda. Philosophically bankrupt, the dogmatists of the party could at best parrot the verbiage of university academics who, in reductionist fashion, associated the development problems of the country to bad governance.

Poverty had alarmingly risen from 25% in 2001 to 32% today, as per government statistics. This came at a time when the economy doubled, GDP-wise, and the country had been dubbed as an ‘emerging market’. Can poverty be factored solely to bad governance, as liberal quacks now claim?

Whether the so-called ‘think-tank’ of the Liberal Party or LP possesses the comprehensive grasp of the country’s problems is doubtful. A ‘think-tank’ that is theoretically bankrupt could at best be a coterie of mediocre dudes whose sense of originality in problem-solving engagements is nil.

There surely were episodes in our economic history when poverty expanded. We can concretely site the following periods: 1983-1996, when poverty incidence rose from 35% in ’83 (Marcos era) to 49% in ’89 (Cory Aquino era) to a 60% peak in ’95 (Ramos Era); and, after a period of radical drop, moved up again in 2001 through 2009, from 25% (‘01)to 28% (’04) to 32% (‘09).

The 32% poverty incidence may not even be accurate. As Prof. Cielito Habito (Ateneo University) sited in his newspaper column, the figure could be a high 35%. My own intuitive assessment is that the figure could be much higher at around 45%.

Those high-poverty episodes were actually periods when the country was under the IMF programs’ tutelage. They were times when liberal policy reforms were radically implemented in the country, to note: liberalization, privatization, deregulation, tax reforms, reduced budgets for social services, currency devaluation, wage freeze, and increased utility prices.

Not only did we witness the expansion of poverty during the same episodes, we also saw the rise of corruption. Weak regulatory frameworks at a time of rising total budgets redound to liberalizing graft as well, resulting to larger largesse for bureaucrats & legislators (returns from pork barrel allocations).

Let’s take the case of trade liberalization. As soon as tariff reforms were implemented in full during the Ramos Era, a whopping P300 Billion+ worth of import duties were wiped out, thus reducing revenues so drastically. With nil safety nets in implementation, the tariff reform saw millions of affected small planters, fishers, craftsmen, and farm workers experience large-scale income drops, thus instantly leading to larger poverty incidence.

As commitments to tariff reforms are now binding upon our state, based on signed treaties (ASEAN, WTO), regulatory frameworks for executing projects remain weak. This bad situation ensures the perpetuation of the take of bureaucrats on projects, from the past 10% ‘s.o.p.’ circa 1980s, to the gargantuan 40% today and higher rate tomorrow. E.g. a road project worth P1 Billion will be priced/budgeted at P1.4 Billion, with P400 Million allowance for the grafters (they call it ‘for the boys’).

Note that during the periods of extensive liberal reforms, Hacienda Luisita escaped agrarian reform’s surgical operations. Of course, the regulatory and executory frameworks of the agrarian reform law were so weak, so much that President Aquino’s family estate was accorded special treatment that it enjoys till these days.

Ipso facto, liberal reforms practically destroyed the already weak regulatory frame that we Filipinos have struggled so hard to build since the time of the 1^st presidency yet (Aguinaldo, 1898-1900). Curbing poverty and graft, which indeed go together, requires draconian tactics of state interventionism or dirigism, not liberalism.

It is all too easy a kindergarten stuff to forecast that under a liberal regime, poverty will swell to higher incidence (beyond 40%). As budgets and projects increase, so will graft move up, probably eating as much as 60% of total appropriations at certain junctures.

The ‘walang korupsyon’ (no corruption) flaunted by the liberal quacks is nothing but empty propaganda. Bereft of creative approaches to diminishing corruption, the ‘walang korupsyon’ line merely re-echoes an age-old line of traditional politicians or trapos desperate to gain electoral victories by duping a gullible electorate.

‘Walang korupsyon’ isn’t even liberal nor populist a line, but hyper-conservative. Conservatism serves the interests of Big Business, Big Landlords, Big Church (biggest landlord in the Philippines), and foreign capital.

We are therefore not surprised that the leaders and groups representing Big Business, Big Landlords, Big Church (Jesuits, Opus Dei, bishops), and foreign capital have openly supported Noynoy Aquino & the Liberal Party.

The LP of the Philippines now appears more as a copycat of the fascistic Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. Don’t ever be surprised that both parties are good friends within the Liberal International league.

A liberal regime will most likely be saddled with enormous graft and poverty problems that, within a couple of years of its incumbency, patriotic soldiers and populist groups would alternately shake it down to rubbles. A veteran of civil society campaigns myself, I would most likely be marching the streets again to oppose moralist pretenders who are in fact greedy crocodiles.  

Liberalism doesn’t represent the interest of the nation and people, and should be rejected in the coming polls and the next ones to come.

[Philippines, 13 April 2010. Prof. Erle Argonza is an economist, sociologist, and international consultant. He’s a member of the very prestigious Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration or EROPA. See: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com; https://unladtau.wordpress.com, http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com.]

OLIGARCHIC CRIMES UNPUNISHED: LUCIO TAN

Erle Frayne  Argonza

The politico-economic structure of Philippine reality never seems to change at all. It’s still the oligarchic system that lingers here, as it is anywhere in the planet. Oligarchs are simply in control of every strategic sector of life, both economic and political.

That’s why they are above the Law, that they can pay anything worth their pockets to meet their objectives, bribe their way to continuing hoarding and accumulation way beyond their daily needs. The Law adjusts to them, not them to the Law.

Take the case of the long-time Marcos crony Lucio Tan. Tan is almost everywhere in Philippine business life, name it and he’s there. The once state champion Philippine National Bank is in his control now, and so the former state champion Philippine Airlines. And his business concerns continue to expand, both here and overseas.

But one thing glaring about his behavior is his non-payment of taxes that date back to the 80s yet or maybe even earlier. The consummate tax evader, he is the exemplar in this regard here in Manila.

As of last year, estimates put his back tax arrears at P26 Billion. If all we know, this could be an underestimation. This could just be but the top of the iceberg, the real back taxes running probably in the hundreds of billions of pesos. We can’t say anymore. That is because documents can be doctored, and there are always ‘doctor of forgery’ everywhere including the state bureaucracy.

Perhaps we may have discovered, in the criminal behavior of oligarchs, a new universal law, the “law of the bending of the Law.” It’s like the pattern about the ‘bending of light’, this time we substitute Law for light.

Which means that Law is relative, or is of no value to oligarchs save that they serve oligarchic interests. This is true everywhere, and it won’t be long when even those colonies to be installed in other planets and the moon will face the same reality: the ‘bending of the Law’ to make oligarchs happy.

BUILD STRONG NATIONS AMID GLOBALIZATION

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

[Writ 22 March 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

 

In my meaty article on New Nationalism, I advanced fourteen (14) contentions in substantiation of what neo-nationalism is.

 

The first basic contention is that the nation-state can thrive and grow amid globalization. In other words, globalization shouldn’t lead to the destruction of nation-states. The trend since the start of massive implementation of liberal reforms leading to global integration of markets has been, in fact, the destruction of nation-states. This trend has to be stopped now.

 

There is really no reason to destroy the nations just so that our global community can be integrated. In the Philippine experience, nationalism has been a positive, progressive force that had united close to 100 ethno-linguistic communities. The Philippine nation had just lately crystallized, with a national identity now in shape though in moderate level, a phenomenon that took over 200 years to build.

 

There is no way that we can allow the massive destruction of nations today just in order to whet the appetites of the global oligarchy and their transnational corporations or TNCs for control over the world’s resources and labor. The conservation of nations must be a pre-requisite to building the ‘peace condition’ nationally and globally, guided by the principle of ‘dialogue of civilizations’.

 

On the other hand, amid the failings of globalization, we simply cannot go back to the past and destroy the integration efforts altogether. We can still move on towards a more progressive globalization that serves the interests of nations rather than the global oligarchy. Nations can derive benefits from integrated markets, we can’t overstress the risk-side of globalization at the expense of the benefit-side.

 

Somewhere along the line, the striving for stronger nations must cohere with the collective efforts for integrated markets. Later on, nations would compose an integrated political entity, the global state with its own global institutions.

 

Below is the excerpt from the New Nationalism article regarding the nation-state.

 

Strong nation can thrive & grow amid globalization.

 

The nation can continue to exist, even become strengthened, while it sails deep into the middle of the ocean of globalization. The two are not necessarily contradictory. Nationhood can continuously be pursued, patriotism can move ahead while paddling astride the powerful waves of globalization. For as earlier stated, globalization holds the promise of growth through the vast opportunities it has opened. Nations must strive to concur cooperation with other nations to extend the scope and limits of the opportunities, while at the same time build internal opportunities to further optimize inducements for investments.

 

Just recently, our entrepreneurs and professionals made waves through the international awards they respectively received, such as Tan Caktiong (top entrepreneur) and F. Palafox (the only ASEAN architect to make it to the world’s Top 200 architects), signifying the high level of competitiveness our compatriots are capable of achieving. Such sterling achievements surely inspire us to continue to strengthen nationhood and to forge new areas of cooperation and growth-inducing endeavors. While forces exist that work to tear the nation asunder, forces are likewise growing that lead to the nation’s strengthening. We should all work hard to make sure that the latter forces prevail, while neutralizing and diminishing the potencies of those forces that destroy nationhood.