The Lipa declaration: An urgent call for national transformation

http://www.manilatimes.net/lipa-declaration-urgent-call-national-transformation/122184/

August 27, 2014 11:47 pm

Adopted on August 27, 2014 by groups demanding the resignation of President Benigno Aquino 3rd.

We are Filipino citizens of different personal, professional social and economic backgrounds and political persuasions and religious beliefs. We have gathered here in Lipa City on this 27th day of August A.D. 2014/ 2nd day of DHU AL-QA’DA A.H. 1435, under the auspices of the National Transformation Council, to reaffirm our deeply held convictions and beliefs about the common good and our highest national interests, in the face of the most pressing challenges.

We invite all our compatriots everywhere to reaffirm with us the same convictions and beliefs.

We believe that:

A crisis of unprecedented proportions has befallen our nation. The life of the nation is in grave peril from the very political forces that are primarily ordained to protect, promote and advance its well-being, but which are aggressively undermining its moral, religious, social, cultural, constitutional and legal foundations;

Unbridled and unpunished corruption and widespread misuse of political and economic power in all layers of society have not only destroyed our common conception of right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust, legal and illegal, but also put our people, especially the poor, at the mercy of those who have the power to dictate the course and conduct of our development for their own selfish ends;

Far from preserving and defending the constitution, as he swore to do when he assumed office, the incumbent President Benigno Simeon Aquino has subverted and violated it by corrupting Congress, intimidating the judiciary, taking over the treasury, manipulating the automated voting system, and perverting the constitutional impeachment process; President Benigno Simeon Aquino 3rd has also damaged the moral fabric of Philippine Society by bribing members of Congress not only to impeach and remove a sitting Supreme Court Chief Justice but also to enact a law which disrespects the right to life of human being at the earliest and most vulnerable stages of their lives, in defiance not only of the constitution but above all of the moral law, the customs, culture, and consciences of Filipinos.

Therefore, faithful to the objective moral law and to the universally honored constitutional principle that sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them, we declare that President Benigno Simeon Aquino 3rd has lost the moral right to lead the nation, and had become a danger to the Philippine Democratic and Republican state and to the peace, freedom, security and moral and spiritual well-being of the Filipino people.

We further declare that we have lost all trust and confidence in President Benigno Simeon Aquino 3rd, and we call upon him to immediately relinquish his position.

And we call upon the National Transformation Council, (Hereafter the council), to assume the urgent and necessary task of restoring our damaged political institutions to their original status and form before we begin to consider electing a new government under normal political conditions.

The role of the council will not be to succeed President Aquino, but solely to prevent the total destruction of our political system, and to rebuild and nourish its institutions back to health so that all those interested could join the political competition later, without the dice being loaded in anyone’s favor.

Like a crew whose task is to put everything in order before a commercial carrier, which had earlier developed some problems in midair, is cleared again for takeoff, the council’s duty will be only to repair the battered tripartite system and to make sure that the people are once again able to freely and intelligently elect their own leaders.

In this connection, we welcome the council’s proposal to open broad public consultations on the need to modify and strengthen the presidential system or to shift from the Unitary / Presidential system to a federal / Parliamentary System, endowing such structure with:

A totally independent judicial department, free from any kind of intimidation or bullying by either the Executive or the Legislative Department, and with the sufficient wherewithal to clear the backlog of the courts and fast-track all cases;

A merit-driven, professional civil and military service;

Totally transparent government budgeting, procurement, disbursement, accounting and auditing systems and procedures; and

An irreproachably independent and completely dependable electoral system, free from the virus that has corrupted the Automated Voting System Since 2010.

Whatever the final form of government the citizenry decide to adopt, absolutely indispensable are the integrity and independence of the courts, and the existence of an incorrupt electoral system by means of which we, the people, are able to freely and intelligently choose our own leaders in free and honest elections. Without these, we cannot speak of a normally functioning democratic and thus we fully support the council’s position that until we have such a fraud-free electoral system, we should refrain from holding any farcical election. But once we have it, we should encourage the best qualified men and women in the country to participate in the open electoral process so that together, we could put an end to the stranglehold exercised by the corrupt and incompetent political dynasties upon our elections.

Finally, we support the council’s proposal that with political reform there must go hand in hand comprehensive economic reform. With one strong voice, we must now say a vigorous “NO,” as Pope Francis has suggested, to an economics of exclusion and inequality, coming from a misguided vision of the human being and of society harmfully acted upon through myopic laws, policies and programs.

As the council prepares to embark upon the necessary reforms, we call upon the Armed Forces of the Philippines, as the constitutional “protector of the people and the state,” to extend its protective shield to the council, and not to allow any armed group to sow violence, disorder or discord into its peaceful ranks.

Adopted in Lipa City, this 27th day of August A.D. 2014 / 2nd day of DHU AL-QA’DA A.H. 1435.

http://www.philstar.com/business/2014/08/27/1362096/costly-mistakes-our-nation-building

Costly mistakes in our nation-building

CROSSROADS (Toward Philippine Economic and Social Progress) By Gerardo P. Sicat (The Philippine Star) | Updated August 27, 2014 - 12:00am

Big mistakes in nation-building arise out of unwise decisions. Small mistakes that serially get repeated are big mistakes.

I have often dealt with such mistakes in my discussions of policy reforms. Today I will be blunt and talk of them as bad decisions. They cost our nation a great deal of distress and pain. They deter and alter for the worse our march toward economic and social progress.

“Reasons for mistakes.” In general, there are three dominating reasons that explain how a mistake is committed: a bad decision could be the result of (a) wrong reasoning; (b) incompetence; and (c) emotions arising from self-righteous indignation.

It is possible that all three contribute to the making of a bad decision. This convergence would not happen all the time.

Yet, a nation’s political system should be able to insulate the leaders from making such terrible mistakes. In our young democracy, the absence of feedback on the errors that we commit in nation-building, the weakness of the country’s economic and political institutions, the lack of sufficient debate on important issues, and the cult of personality contribute to the failure to make sound decisions that help promote the common good.

Let us draw up a list of these mistakes and discuss why they have proven costly to the nation.

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“Restrictive economic provisions in the Constitution concerning foreign investments.” I have put this problem as the most costly blunder in our nation-building. I did write about it about two years ago, and the essay is reproduced in my book, Weighing In on the Philippine Economy and Social Progress (Anvil, 2013, pp. 186-7).

Large economic and political interests benefit from mistaken policies, for they acquire more power from the benefits that they derive. Hence, any moves to rectify mistaken policies could be thwarted by these interests. This is one reason why it is difficult to change the said constitutional provisions.

For a while, there was a strong move in Congress to undertake a reform of these economic provisions through “charter change” (cha-cha). This economic cha cha, however, is now under some jeopardy.

The recent indication that the president now is partial toward seeking a second term of office requires cha-cha to amend the political provisions on term limits. This development inevitably snarls us back to the political cha-cha as the trade-off toward getting an economic cha-cha.

Thus, the reform on economic provisions is held hostage again to political developments.

“No to nuclear power.” The decision to scuttle the nuclear power project was the result of self-righteous outrage of the new president. Cory Aquino associated the nuclear power project with corruption. And the object of hate was Marcos.

The nuclear power project cost the nation some US$1.2 biliion dollars at its cost then. It was thought to be over-priced and large commissions had changed hands. To demonstrate moral outrage, the project was discontinued. The cost of the decision impoverished the nation in several respects.

For one thing, the investment was associated with foreign debts incurred to finance it. Eventually, these debts had to be paid out of the nation’s coffers. That decision burdened us with enormous debts without a single ounce of new productivity (no electrical output).

Hence, it reduced the nation’s capacity to service its debt from this act alone! It also plunged the nation into a power crisis over a prolonged period, the nation’s economic inefficiency rose.

The economic loss from this mistaken decision is a large multiple of the cost of the project. There was economic loss from this mistake in terms of year-to-year output (or GDP) forgone.

Then compare it to the investment already made. It was stopped when it was ready to be commissioned for service! Therefore, it was almost ready to go. The economic loss to us was certainly a grand multiple of the investment cost.

The investment cost to us was real. It was sunk investment. By Cory Aquino’s decision, we had to continue servicing the loans incurred in the project and swallow the other expended construction costs as lost

Yes, other reasons could have provoked the decision – safety, cost, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl. Other countries with nuclear power projects knew better. They tightened their safety requirements (as we did.) The wrong calculus of welfare for the nation was used.

What have we got to show, because of the Cory Aquino decision? It’s not only the empty shell of a wasted investment in the power structure that lies today in Bataan. We got the 1990s energy shortages that cost the nation a lot of foregone industrial progress. In part because of high power costs, many foreign investments have gone to tour neighbors in Southeast Asia.

Moreover, we wasted practically the whole six-year term of a very able president, Fidel Ramos, who spent most of his time repairing the damage left behind by the energy deficiencies that the country suffered. Because he had to cure the problem in the shortest possible time, he got us into fairly high cost contracts for generated electricity that was made available to the nation.

“Our nuclear neighbors.” At the start of the nuclear power project, we were alongside major countries that embraced nuclear power as a source of electricity at the time. In our region, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan initiated their nuclear power projects after the energy crisis during this period.

It brought to their industries higher technological sophistication. Their manpower complement in engineering and scientific capacity rose toward a new level.

Today, China is on a high course of nuclear power development along with other energy projects. The dogged determination of Iran, a country with enormous supply of petroleum and gas resources, to have a nuclear industry can be gauged in part by the leap in technology that this industry would bring to this nation.

If only Cory Aquino did not make the mistake concerning the nuclear power project in 1987, we would be dependent on nuclear power on a broader scale today, like Taiwan and South Korea, now two very highly developed countries, whose growth paralleled ours during the early post-war years.

Possibly too, we might have followed a different path toward progress. Such experience could have also induced us to become much more competitive economy.

My email is: gpsicat@gmail.com. Visit this site for more information, feedback and commentary:http://econ.upd.edu.ph/gpsicat/