“I can walk, but why do I need to chew gum too”? Recall the blog has discussed the imperative for Juan de la Cruz to forward-think – to develop a “growth” mindset instead of a fixed one. Otherwise, we will remain the regional laggard. And won’t figure out and traverse poverty to prosperity.
And here is a perspective from the private sector. “AS THE PHILIPPINES continues its efforts to protect lives and livelihoods during the pandemic, Filipino business leaders have a dual role in serving. To be thoughtful in addressing the needs of their customers and employees, while also looking ahead at positioning their companies to emerge stronger from the crisis.” [“How an agile approach will help Filipino companies stay resilient in a post-COVID world,” David Pralong Hyejin Kang, Kristine Romano, Asilah Azil; McKinsey & Company, BusinessWorld, 8th Oct 2020]
Let’s pause and paraphrase the above: Our leaderships must be thoughtful of their dual roles (a) to serve and address current needs and (b) to look ahead at positioning the Philippines to emerge stronger [from the pandemic.]
The writer paused to attend to other chores, and in the meantime, George came to mind. With the wife, they’re proud to have been friends with Fr. George Gorospe, SJ. [May he rest in peace.] Through mutual friends, we belonged to a “TGIFriday club.” It was an informal group that met after hours on Fridays for cocktails, and then some – for fun. On a First Friday, there were times that George would say a quick mass, including general absolution and communion.
Yet, what would stick out were the numerous times he started a conversation on the topic of “reality.” It was not until many years later that the writer realized what it was all about. And so, he read some of George’s works.
“No human formulation of reality, no philosophical explanation of human experience can say: ‘I have grasped the whole of ‘reality’ and crystallized it in an expression or system that exhausts all its meaning. Reality is too rich and is continuously changing; it can’t fall under a set of categories.
“Hence, there is need today of a more dynamic and more existential philosophy inspired by the Neo-Thomist revival of the authentic thought of St. Thomas, i.e., it is not a ‘closed system’ but remains ‘open’ to the valid insights of other philosophies. For example, to the contribution of contemporary phenomenology and existentialism.
“A shift in emphasis from the traditional systemic courses in philosophy now obtaining in the Catholic College is much to be desired. For example, they can include the history of Indian and Chinese philosophy and the contemporary philosophy of intersubjectivity.
“If philosophy is to become relevant and meaningful to the average Filipino College student of today, a re-examination of the philosophy curricula in the Catholic College is imperative.” [Christian Renewal of Filipino Values, Vitaliano R. Gorospe; Philippine Studies vol. 14, no. 2, 1966; Ateneo de Manila University]
Recall the blog often raises the joke that is Padre Damaso, given his absolute knowledge and authority. And that we live in a very dynamic universe. In other words, Juan de la Cruz cannot be static and fixed in his mindset and instead develop a “growth mindset.” Because without a growth mindset, we will be hard-pressed to “forward-think.” See above; “to look ahead at positioning the Philippines to emerge stronger [from the pandemic.]”
But let’s get back to George. “The solution to a problem depends to a great extent on one’s awareness of the problem and his attitude towards it. The worse possible attitude is not to be aware of the issue at all.
[“Wala pa namang problema, ok pa naman.” Can we pause and ponder: How do we undo the downsides of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Act? What about overcoming our “Dutch disease,” aka the OFW phenomenon, and rapidly building an industrial economy? And to add insult to injury, why did we get into POGOs?]
“Another wrong attitude is complacency when one is aware but is not concerned. The individual who feels secure and comfortable with the status quo sees no need for change.
[Recall the effort of the blog to be self-critical of our caste system. We in the elite class must face the day of reckoning at some point. The sooner, the better.]
“Some individuals see the problem, but it is too frightening. Hence, they are afraid to decide and initiate change because it is painful and difficult. That is the attitude of timidity.
“Others try to escape from the real problems. They skirt confrontation with the real issue in their lives and raise pseudo-problems as a camouflage.
[Who among our neighbors raised Federalism as the key to their economic miracles?]
“Finally, a typical attitude is rationalization. People who know they are doing wrong but do not want to change easily find excuses.
“In the age of ‘passing the buck,’ another excuse for shirking personal responsibility is the ‘Filipinism,’ ‘I am not the one.’
“All these attitudes of mind are wrong, and without the proper attitude, there can be no solution to the problem. Filipinos will make no progress toward a Christian solution until they realize that the problem is serious and urgent.”
Consider: “Philippines seeks $600-million loan for 4Ps program,” B.M. Laforga, BusinessWorld, 2nd Sep 2020.
“THE Philippines is seeking a fresh $600-million (P29.1-billion) loan from the World Bank (WB) to extend its conditional cash grants to low-income families amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
“Proceeds of the loan will partially fund the proposed $10-billion (P485- billion) Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) in the next five years.”
In other words, looking five years down the road, we will still be in our never-ending war against poverty because there is no end in sight.
Here is a quote from a prior posting: “If we are to unfreeze our minds – and absorb a new experience, as in benchmarking and learning from others – Vietnam is an excellent model to emulate.
“Let’s establish a starting point so that we can compare apples to apples. Vietnam thinks ‘development’ while we ‘think poverty.’ Vietnam is forward-looking while we’re backward-looking.
“Consider the last dozen years: Vietnam has broken the back of poverty while we’re still fighting this ugly war. Their poverty rate is a fraction of ours, a third.
“How did they generate the wealth to succeed – while we continue to fail?
“From the above base year, the two countries’ exports were roughly equal at $49-B. Fast-forward to 2019, their exports were up 525% against our 43%. That is a whopping increase of $256-B compared to ours, $21-B.
“How do these numbers translate to poverty reduction?
“What are the sources of tax revenues? They come from national income. And here’s a simple exercise for Juan de la Cruz to (a) attract FDIs and (b) be on the road toward Vietnam’s export performance.
“Let’s assume (a) we decrease our tax rate to 20%, from 30%, to be as attractive as Vietnam, (b) lure a global market leader in electronic devices as Vietnam did, and (c) double our exports to $140.6-B. That is not relatively equal to Vietnam’s $304.3-B. But it will be a lot more than (1) what we get from the drivers of the economy – OFW remittances and BPO revenues – and (2) will dwarf the combined output of our eight top companies.
“The bottom line: We will generate incremental tax revenues of $7-B.”
How straightforward is that comparison, benchmarking our inability to drive exports against Vietnam’s ability to do so?
Let’s reprise these lines: “The solution to a problem depends to a great extent on one’s awareness of the problem and his attitude towards it. The worse possible attitude is not to be aware of the issue at all. [“Wala pa namang problema, ok pa naman.”]
Then consider: “Unlike many of our East Asian neighbors, we are not heavily dependent on exports for our GDP growth. Even when the world suffers from a recession (e.g., in 1997 to 1999 and 2008 to 2012), our GDP can still grow reasonably fast, i.e., our businesses have a large market to which to sell.” [Filipino family post-pandemic, Dr. Bernardo M. Villegas, CHANGING LIVES, Manila Bulletin, 24th Sep 2020]
Aren’t we the regional laggard? We want to celebrate that we aren’t heavily dependent on exports, or is this a problem we’ve failed to address going for decades?
Consider: “The Philippine Balance of Trade in Agricultural Goods stands at a deficit of $1,187.56 million, where our Agricultural Exports stand at $1,606.65 million while our Agricultural Imports stand at $2,794.21 million as of the First Quarter 2020.
“Philippine agricultural trade performance vis-à-vis our ASEAN neighbors showed that the overwhelming source of our trade deficit was with our neighbors. From an aggregate of $869.65 million, the largest deficits are with Vietnam ($260.54 million), Indonesia ($223.83 million), Malaysia ($154.29 million), and Singapore ($100.91 million).” [Interlinking health, local agriculture and a food-secure environment, Dr. Jaime Jimenez, Thinking Beyond Politics, BusinessWorld, 6th Oct 2020]
The story doesn’t end there: “The World Bank said the ongoing crisis would create a class of ‘new poor’ or people who have fallen below the poverty threshold unexpectedly because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Poverty in the Philippines is expected to climb to 22.4% this year from the estimated 20.5% rate last year based on the lower-middle-income poverty rate of $3.20 per day. That is also higher than the previous forecast of a 21.5% poverty incidence.
“In the case of the Philippines, this will translate a little bit more than two million people (pushed back to poverty.)
“This is higher than the bank’s estimate in June that 1.2 million Filipinos will slip into poverty. They do not expect the poverty rate to go back to pre-pandemic levels by next year, but this could gradually decline to 21.4%, and further down to 20.4% by 2022.
“Based on the upper-middle-income poverty level of a $5.50 spending per day, the poverty rate is seen increasing to 52.1% by year's end from 50.4% in 2019, before it slowly declines to 51.3% next year and 50.4% in 2022.” [PHL faces volatile recovery, says WB, Beatrice M. Laforga, BusinessWorld, 30th Sep 2020]
What to do?
“The book ‘The Atlas of Economic Complexity’ has this line: ‘Knowledge can only be accumulated, transferred and preserved when embedded in networks of individuals and organizations that put this knowledge into productive use.’
“We have to support innovation—R&D certainly—if we want to make our country and economy significant, regionally and globally, in the coming brave new world.
“While the Senate’s working draft of CREATE already gives incentives to R&D activities, I raised that we must make some amendments so that registered business enterprises have more room to branch out into other products and services.
“In short, a company’s R&D eligible activities must extend beyond the products or services that they are currently offering.
“We also brought up the idea of incorporating aspects of an ‘intellectual property [I.P.] box’ or ‘patent box’ tax regime. That is standard among many European Union countries, i.e., companies that earn from I.P. that they’ve helped create or co-own get preferential rates.
“It is the consensus among the senators present, during the public hearing on the 2021 budget of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), that funding for government R&D has historically been lackluster.
“And so, as Finance Committee Chair, we asked DOST Secretary Fortunato de la Peña to submit to us a priority list so that we in the Senate can determine how best to allocate scarce public funds.
“We then asked the Department to help us identify which among the so-called 21st-century industries the Philippines could excel in so that as early as now, we could already make strategic investments and prepare ourselves for whatever opportunities that may emerge.
“We also requested the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) to demonstrate to us how their proposed satellite development programs could spill over to other science and industrial spaces—as justification for a more significant budgetary allocation for them.
“PhilSA Director General Joel Marciano said that the know-how we will gain from building our satellites could be leveraged, e.g., into developing high-value electronics. Also, the data science needed would strengthen our foundations to excel in an information-driven future.
“Secretary de la Peña wrote a chapter in the GII, where he described ‘Filipinnovation,’ a whole-of-government approach crafted by key government agencies such as the DOST, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).
“For Sec. de la Peña, the approach is the Bayanihan community spirit as applied to develop homegrown technologies through a countrywide network for innovation where government researchers, the academe, and industry are closely collaborating.” [Ensuring Filipinnovation becomes a growth driver, Sonny M. Angara, BETTER DAYS, BusinessMirror, 1st Oct 2020]
Here are the writer’s two cents. The imperative to support R&D is a must. But the instinct to be inward-looking must be a non-starter. Developing Philippine R&D capability must include an external emphasis. Recall how the Vietnamese are emphasizing both the supply and demand side of their rice industry.
The writer’s old MNC-company had a technology center with a thousand scientists, yet its network included independent entrepreneurial R&D labs, universities, and professional organizations. And the model extended to market-tests initiatives of new products across continents.
Likewise, time is of the essence. In a dozen years, Vietnam raised their exports by 525% against our 43%, a whopping increase of $256-B compared to ours, $21-B.
They did not own the technology, but they raised their national income so fast that they generated so much tax revenues to break the back of poverty.
They can then fund and support their R&D efforts. The word is “dynamism.” Like George’s dynamic definition of “reality,” we must also embrace a “dynamic description of R&D.”
Let’s use the “dynamism” test to assess AmBisyon Natin 2040:
“By 2040, Filipinos enjoy a strongly rooted, comfortable, and secure life. In 2040, we will all enjoy a stable and comfortable lifestyle, secure in the knowledge that we have enough for our daily needs and unexpected expenses, that we can plan and prepare for our own and our children's future. Our family lives together in a place of our own, and we have the freedom to go where we desire, protected, and enabled by a clean, efficient, and fair government.”
Can we have a more dynamic AmBisyon Natin 2040? See below; the imperatives of self-government, personal responsibility, and the common good.
Let’s get back to George.
“Christianity isn’t taught because the individual is free to accept or reject Christ. A ‘lived’ Christianity for the individual involves understanding, acceptance, and commitment. An individual can understand or be informed about the Christian religion without becoming a Christian.
“We cannot understand Christian commitment without saying a word about Christian responsibility. First of all, to be ‘responsible’ means to respond freely on one’s own independently of others, to be able to think and decide for oneself and therefore answerable or accountable for one’s actions. In this sense, being responsible is identical to accepting one’s status as a free independent individual, with being a person.
“Secondly, to be ‘responsible’ means to commit oneself and achieve some personal identity freely; to act freely and decisively to become the kind of person one wants to be. In this sense, only the committed individual merits the name of an authentic person. Finally, to be responsible is to act in response to the human situation in a Christian way. Only in this sense of a personal and total response to Christ’s invitation of love can we speak of Christian commitment.”
Recall the parallel to the blog’s discussion on self-government, demanding personal responsibility, and being committed to the common good. And why our instincts and worldview explain why nation-building keeps slipping away from our grasp.
Consider: We are parochial and insular. We value hierarchy and paternalism that we rely on political patronage and oligarchy that ours is a culture of impunity.
The imperatives of (a) self-government, (b) personal responsibility, and (c) the common good demanded by democracy aren’t about being the East or West. Think about Christianity being universal.
Here’s more from George: “Authoritarianism is not the same as authority. One can be an authoritarian even if he has no ‘authority’ whatsoever—a person who is ‘authoritarian’ demands blind obedience at the expense of individual liberty.
“As such, authoritarianism sacrifices or mutilates self-dependence and personal development and maturity. A person in authority who realizes that Authoritarianism is a disvalue and detrimental to ‘personal development’ can more easily understand the meaning and proper use of authority.
“Today, the liberal ideas many Filipino College students learn from school come into open conflict with the traditional beliefs of their conservative parents. One way of striking a happy balance between tradition and progress is communication between parents and children through frank discussion.
“One of the most significant obstacles to individual Christian maturity is the Authoritarianism of the traditional Filipino family and the Philippines’ Church. Yet, the Christian exercise of authority as service can be a potent force for the Christian renewal of Filipino values.
[In other words, “public service” isn’t a license for impunity. It is what it says, “public service.” If a politician can’t commit to public service, they have no business being in the public sector. In the exercise of personal responsibility demanded by self-government and the common good, Juan de la Cruz must not elect him or her. The acid test: Integrity, like Christianity, isn’t taught because a person is free to accept or reject it. That is the crux of our backwardness and why we’re the regional laggard.]
“Individualism and the Filipino personality’s small group centeredness have hindered rather than helped nation-building.
“It has been pointed out that we Filipinos sadly lack in ‘social consciousness’ of the common good. That is why our homes are immaculately clean, and our public toilets are foul and dirty.
“The Filipino electorate is typically individualistic in its motivation and voting pattern. The question the candidate must answer if he is to get the Filipino vote is not ‘What is in it for the country?’ But ‘What is in it for me, or my family, or my party.’?
“Unlike the Japanese, we Filipinos still lack the national discipline and sacrifice necessary for socio-economic development and growth. While we are one nation with one Christian faith, regionalism and factionalism are still strong, and a collective sense of the Christian community and the ‘people of God’ is sadly lacking.”
Can we walk and chew gum at the same time?
Consider this expression in the vernacular, “Wala pa namang problema, ok pa naman.” See above; we in the elite class must face the day of reckoning.
Gising bayan!
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