Reading the Senate
President’s “A harvest of dreams” – the speech he delivered
at the opening of the Third Regular Session of the Fifteenth Congress
– would arguably make one take in positive thoughts about Senator
Enrile. Filipinos have had a roller-coaster relationship with him –
from good to bad to indifferent? Yet every now and again, he
demonstrates his altruism? And people saw how objective and impartial
he was during the Corona impeachment trial – until, of course, the
ex-CJ shot himself in the foot, admitting while justifying his
unreported assets. The debate shall never cease – whether that was
an impeachable offense. But if we are to establish the rule of law
for the umpteenth time, we have to start somewhere. And since rank
has its privileges, one occupying such a lofty post – and
especially charged to uphold the rule of law – must meet a higher
standard than Juan de la Cruz. Similarly, Juan de la Cruz must have
no equivocation that a red light means stop. It is encouraging that
the search for the next CJ has elevated the axiom that “justice
delayed is justice denied.” There ought to be no two ways about it.
Democracy and the free market presuppose transparency and political
maturity.
Senator Enrile
demonstrated once again his grasp of the nation’s ills and in such
a short discourse. And it also says that the Senate is indeed the
citadel of wisdom – as gleaned from the focus of its legislative
agenda: from recognizing our cacique culture that perpetuates
influence peddling and thus the need to create a level playing field
to transparency to the imperatives of investment and technology to
drive industry and the economy to protecting the interests of Juan de
la Cruz and his future and thus the environment, among others.
The one item from the
Senate’s legislative agenda that gives pause though is the one that
says “institutionalizing the participation of civil
society organizations in the preparation of the annual national
budget.” That sounds altruistic but it must not become a
vehicle of discord and ultimately compromise that will only reinforce
our “crab mentality.” The key to such an initiative is to
strengthen our definition of the common good; for example, the budget
must establish basic parameters like “purposeful enterprise” or
critical mass. It cannot be akin to pacifying kids. For over several
decades we’ve been patronizing to Juan de la Cruz – while giving
a wink and a nod to oligarchy via a culture of poor governance (i.e.,
influence peddling) that favored special interests – thus stunting
the development of political maturity and ensuring mediocre economic
performance. And as we got deeper and deeper into our ways of
sub-optimized allocation of resources, we had to resort to social
engineering (to appease Juan de la Cruz) that proved shortsighted and
counterproductive – e.g., land reform, a distorted wage index that
overvalued unskilled work, party-list representation, regional
white-elephant infrastructure projects, among others – and has only
driven us farther and farther away from the common good and thus
undermining the interests of Juan de la Cruz himself.
If we think democracy is
flawed, the world now knows that socialism Soviet-style has failed
most of the satellite countries with the balance carrying on with
autocratic rule, adding insult to injury. And with Russia itself
seemingly in denial, reasserting strong-arm tactics as oil revenue
fills their coffers. But they may be pushing their luck, indifferent
to the imperative of industrialization. (The old debate between
industrialization and agriculture no longer holds: agribusiness is in
fact an industry where success can’t come from the outdated passive
model of contract production but via an ecosystem founded on
state-of-the-art technology (across the supply chain) and product
innovation (across the value chain.) And to be parochial is not the
way to get there but by being a good global citizen.) And the
writer is reminded about this by his Eastern European friends with
whom he has worked and lived for most of the last 10 years. Socialism
may sound romantic but its reality confined millions of them to what
they now call “their dark ages.”
But to make democracy and
free enterprise work, we must learn to embrace dynamism. A passive
culture does not lend itself to dynamism and thus gives the fittest
the playing field all to themselves? One prominent columnist
wondered aloud why there is only one native Filipino among our
billionaires, and is it our lack of dynamism that is at the root?
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