BEYOND COALITION BUILDING

LAST week saw a ceremony of the four-party (as of now) coalition with the President's party for the next election. The President was quoted as saying that this was not just a political maneuver and not a marriage of convenience but based on ideology. The article in The Manila Times last Monday quoted the President as follows: "We speak now of unity, we speak now of Bagong Pilipinas, bringing the country, transforming the country to another place to a better place than we had found it."

I hope that is true rather than a mere hope, but I wish there was more to what the ideology encompasses. I view unity as a hope and goal but not an ideology, and want to know how we plan to move to a better place and one that preferably is lasting. I am not a media person or in politics, so I may have missed the details of the shared ideology "Bagong Pilipinas" encompasses but hope to read more.

I view one of the major challenges of our imperfect political system and sort of democracy that there does not seem to be an ideological debate but merely a battle for patronage in which the only position that truly matters is the president.

I hope the coalition fleshes it out, and we can analyze how they want to take us further from a governance and more important, policy view. However, this gets me to my main point which I think together with a rethink of industrial policy and anticipatory, and developmental infrastructure is this. It is critical that those policies are lasting. They need to last as these policies need to go beyond an administration or even two. These changes and policies need to be lasting.

It is that we reach at least some consensus on these changes and have it move beyond politics. They need to be a given that carries on through administrations if we are to have sustained and meaningful progress like at least for some aspects as our neighbors have accomplished. Can some of this be a given? That much of basic policy is depoliticized?

Let's start with what should be uncontroversial, infrastructure. Most of our major infrastructure is backward looking and fills a need. Whether a road, bridge, airport or whatever else. Even just dealing with existing infrastructure is contentious or controversial, takes time and goes through a protracted process. We have dramatic bids, and so on, then congressional hearings in aid of whatever, lawsuits, and the like. Filling the need then takes longer and often by the time the backlog is completed and the need addressed, it is no longer adequate and the laborious and contentious process often repeats itself. Then a lot of progress while important often skirts the more fundamental issues. Let's take NAIA. It was good to have an additional terminal (once every 20 years is not enough), but not no additional runways. The argument that there isn't space really means it is too tough to expropriate more land from the heavily populated adjoining areas as it will be prohibitively expensive and contentious. Then isn't it time for a new airport? Seems like an obvious issue, yet how long have we been dealing with this dilemma? I first heard about this in the 1990s. We might get there before my life is over.

Can we streamline that process of adding major new infrastructure as well as making substantial improvements to existing ones and make it uncontroversial and frankly less dramatic — this super consortium against the upstart, and so on, might be newsworthy but detracts from what needs to be done and its timeliness and quality. Then we can at least begin doing something that has not been done since the 1970s — anticipatory infrastructure. Not to fill a backlog but to spur development and lower costs and time. New areas can be developed rather than just existing centers with developmental infrastructure. New ports, bridges, roads and airports will allow other areas to compete and thrive. Not just improving or adding to what is already there but providing new infrastructure in new areas to spur additional and new development beyond where investments are already concentrated. How do we jump-start progress if we keep looking backwards and merely fill needs rather than spur development.

Now let's get to industrial policy. That is needed to have manufacturing and industrialization. It is hard, often must change and be modified, but it is the only way to mass employment and prosperity given we have a large population. I have discussed it previously and unlike cut-and-paste will not cut and paste or keep repeating myself.

What I know will not get any consensus or be depoliticized, but it is an emergency, is population control. It makes development, nutrition, education and wealth creation so much harder if you must keep exporting 20 percent of the workforce, or they will starve and be out of work, plus their families do the same. Then, if we have to keep forcing our people to have no choice and divide families, and so on, who needs a divorce law when there is already de facto divorce and much worse in practice. Not to mention the strain of housing, educating and feeding this ever-growing population which is already unsustainable. Look at the population density of Metro Manila. It exceeds even Mumbai. I am 65 years old. There were 19 million Filipinos when I was born and about 115 million today for an over 600-percent increase in my lifetime. If China grew the way we did, their population would be 3.4 billion.

Time for consensus and depoliticization of fundamental policy. Now, pretty please.

2024-07-04T16:21:20Z dg43tfdfdgfd