The 4Ps: A poor strategy against poverty

Is living on government dole-outs the way out of poverty?

This is the underlying message behind the conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs initiated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in line with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty by 2015. Mexico started the first CCT program in 1997 and it was copied by other countries. Brazil’s CCT program, called bolsa familia, became known worldwide and every other country is now attempting to replicate it.

The Arroyo government implemented its own CCT program, more popularly known as the 4Ps (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program). President Benigno Aquino III is extending 4Ps as his administration’s signature program to combat poverty with a much bigger budget of P21-billion and an additional loan of $400 million from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Social Welfare and Development Secretary Corazon Soliman presided over former President Arroyo’s 4Ps. She will continue to be at the helm of the CCT program under the Aquino government. Recall that Soliman resigned from her position during the Arroyo administration in the wake of the Hello Garci election cheating scandal. President Aquino picked Soliman as his social welfare secretary after winning the presidential election last June 2010.

Even the megarich city of New York under Mayor Michael Bloomberg has fallen under the spell of the CCT program. New York City established Opportunity NYC as the first conditional cash transfer initiative in the United States, but unlike other programs already running in other parts of the world, the New York program is totally funded by a number of private partners.

The underlying premise behind a conditional transfer program is that it helps the poor to develop their human capital by breaking the cycle of poverty through monetary incentives that meet certain conditionalities. In essence, cash benefits under the CCT program are supposedly linked to specific behaviour changes that help recipients free themselves from the clutches of poverty.

To qualify for cash grants under the Philippine government’s 4Ps, recipients must meet the following conditions: pregnant women must get pre-natal and post natal health care, attend responsible parenthood sessions, children must receive regular preventative health check-ups, children 3-5 years old must attend day care at least 85 per cent of the time, children 6-14 years old must enrol in elementary or high school and attend classes 85 per cent of the time, and children below 14 years old must avail of de-worming pills every five months.

According to the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the 4Ps has already provided, as of January 2009, cash grants to 341,374 poorest households from 27 poorest provinces, 12 cities, and 148 municipalities in the country. By the end of 2009, a total of 700,000 households were expected to benefit from the program.

One heavy criticism of the CCT program is the perception that it is meant to "buy" votes of poor people. No doubt, the CCT program will help any incumbent government to secure votes to win an election. Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, after assuming office in January 2003, expanded the country’s CCT program to become a vigorous social safety net program. Lula was re-elected handily largely because of bolsa familia, his government’s flagship poverty alleviation program. Too bad, Gloria Arroyo could not run for re-election after implementing her own version of the CCT program because of term limits, otherwise she could have used the 4Ps as a vote-generating arm.

Political apprehensions aside, do conditional cash transfer programs really and effectively help the poor break away from the cycle of poverty?

Building social safety nets has become the international trend in government policy-making since the 1980s, after the IMF and World Bank started their programs of economic stabilization and structural adjustment. Aimed towards market deregulation and increased competition, these programs were supposed to lead to the dismantling of the State machinery and cutbacks in public spending, especially in the social sectors. But structural adjustments ushered in adverse consequences like massive poverty, rising unemployment, and a host of other social problems.

Anti-poverty solutions became highly unaffordable under conditions of economic austerity. To counter these adverse social and economic effects of structural adjustments, a strategy was developed by using specific instruments such as social funds implemented by a range of institutions including government, civil society, international donors and the poor communities themselves. Thus, selective cash transfer policies became the major response to the problem of large-scale poverty, although they fall way short of the idea of providing universal benefits as a basic right similar to the guaranteed rights of citizens in industrialized nations.

Stories of families in Brazil who have slid back to conditions where they were before receiving stipends from the government under its bolsa familia sound like a warning to those who think the conditional cash transfer program as a panacea.

Evidence shows that bolsa familia is not working as well in cities as in rural areas where rural poverty in Brazil is much greater. Policy experts have said it would be in the large metropolises of developing countries where the problems of poverty are expected to grow in the future.

Brazil’s bolsa família program is not without its critics. One recurrent criticism of the program is that it discourages the search for employment, encouraging laziness among people. Under this premise, many people would give up trying to find a job, content to live on the program, which many Brazilians called the cesta esmola (“alms-basket”). The National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, a powerful arm of the Catholic Church, maintains that “the program is addictive,” and leads its beneficiaries to an “accommodation.”

Transposed to a highly urbanized environment like New York City, the city’s ambitious privately-funded conditional cash transfer program that offered rewards to poor families for maintaining good habits—like $25 or $150 for things such as going to the dentist, staying on the job or opening a bank account—turned out to be a dud.

Opportunity NYC produced such mediocre results that Mayor Bloomberg conceded it is likely not the answer to eradicating poverty. The Associated Press headline called it “Money for good habits doesn’t change lives.”

According to the urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay), the 4Ps of the Philippine government is a “deceitful program.” The government even has to borrow $400 million from the ADB to fund the 4Ps. As the government is already burdened with servicing its current debt, incurring additional debts will prove even more harmful to the country in the long run.

Besides failing to address the real causes of poverty, the 4Ps as presently construed is sorely insufficient. Compared with Brazil and Mexico which have one-fourth and one-fifth of their households under their respective CCT programs, the 4Ps covers only a mere one million out of 18 million households. Even if the DSWD achieves its 2.3 million target by 2011, it still represents about 0ne-eight of total households. Its impact, therefore, is very minimal and will not make a dent in poverty.

A 2009 study of the impact of CCT programs in Mexico and El Salvador pointed out that the success of any CCT program will depend on the availability of good-quality and accessible health and education services, together with the existence of a governmental system that provides the beneficiaries with access to other social programs. At present, the Philippines does not have this kind of necessary social infrastructure to make the 4Ps meaningful.

For the 4Ps to help families break free from the cycle of poverty, it must seriously address the real roots of mass poverty.

A government dole-out program will not help eradicate poverty. What is needed is a re-orientation of the Philippine economy to respond to the needs of the majority of the Filipino people, and not those of big foreign and local corporations.

Poverty reduction can only be achieved through vigorous, job creating economic growth with redistributive policies and social investment rather than the simple construction of safety nets like the 4Ps. The government’s current conditional cash transfer program fails to address the real problems of the people. With millions to spend, the program could potentially be the next big venue for corruption.

Healthcare as a matter of right

After a year of refuge in Baguio City from the first shock of martial law imposed by Ferdinand Marcos in 1972, our young family decided to leave the mountain retreat and return to the confines of old Manila. Actually, with another child coming, I needed to look for work to support my growing family. Two years later, I would find a job with the Population Centre Foundation, a private organization established to promote and fund family planning programs and research as part of the New Society’s population control initiative. The Foundation was bankrolled by huge grants from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the USAID.

Here it was one late sultry afternoon when the chairperson of the Foundation, the First Lady of the land, Imelda Romualdez-Marcos, made a surprise visit along with her retinue of friends and foreign visitors, among them Van Cliburn, the celebrated American pianist. She wanted to show the new building and its modern facilities to her guests. For the first time, I got up close and personal with the dictator’s better-half, even shaking her soft and silky hands that exuded a fragrance totally foreign to my native nose buds. Mesmerized for some reason, I didn’t wash my hand that night to keep the bouquet as fresh as possible. My right hand was also a bit swollen, almost crushed, when I shook hands with the famous Van Cliburn, whose fingers were so large they could run the full length of two baby grands.

By that time, the Population Commission, the government office in charge of family planning on a national level, was already distributing free condoms, contraceptives and other birth control devices in health centres throughout the country. Their offices were also housed in the Foundation’s new edifice which was part of the tour that I conducted for the heavily-scented First Lady and her guests. The tour ended in the ultramodern kitchen where someone from the group started asking whether there was any food they could nibble before they left. It was fortunate that the canteen concessionaire had a whole apple pie left and the guests, including the wife of the New Society helmsman, digged at it as if they had not eaten for days. Well, the guests loved the lip-smacking apple pie. My boss, the executive director of the Foundation and Madame Imelda’s gynaecologist, took me aside and whispered if I could ask the concessionaire to send another pie to Malacanang Palace where the First Lady and her husband lived. Mrs. Marcos would really appreciate it, he added. His total obeisance jolted me from my bad dream. I quit my job soon after, promising myself not to kowtow again to the infamous occupants of the Palace by the Pasig River, and never to eat an apple pie when our starving people couldn’t even afford to smell or buy a real apple.

More than 35 years have passed and now the country’s Roman Catholic Church is being threatened by a Reproductive Healthcare bill in Congress. For some, it would have been better without such a law since the Catholic Church never protested against family planning and birth control during the Marcoses’ halcyon days. Was it also because the Church lost its voice during the twenty years of iron rule by the Marcoses? Others rue that Church hierarchy waited it out till after the EDSA People Power Revolution drove the Marcos family out of the country. Yes, from all indications, the hierarchy’s reaction was far and between a little bit too late.

Promiscuity, among the young especially, had become permissive. New social values and sexual norms have sprung up and eroded the modesty and temperance of the old generation. The fact is that the Church had slept and almost by default allowed the forces of progress to march onward along with birth control devices. Except for its unflinching stand against abortion, the Church has lost this fight a long time ago.

Truth is, the proposed reproductive healthcare law is not all about birth control as the Church and other opponents of the bill would like to portray it. It only became a family planning issue after President Benigno Aquino III during a recent visit to the United States said that he would extend assistance to couples planning to limit the number of their children by using artificial contraceptives. According to the Church, contraception is a type of abortion and it is a grave crime and banned by the Constitution.

Arguments over the proposed reproductive health law range from whether population control will actually alleviate poverty or whether the law is moral or immoral. Oftentimes, our leaders and policy makers blame overpopulation as the root cause of poverty. That kind of argument goes far back to the Middle Ages which echoed the plaint raised by an Italian priest and diplomat by the name of Giovanni Botero, who said that population cannot increase beyond its food supply.

There are other countries and cities in the world which are much more crowded than Manila or the entire country, yet they have a higher gross domestic product per capita. Accepting that a manageable population of healthy, educated and productive citizens is key to sustainable human development, population control is not an assurance of genuine development.

Poverty in the Philippines is not caused by overpopulation but by farmers’ problems of landlessness, workers’ lack of jobs and low wages, and government policies that favour big business interests over people’s welfare. An inequitable concentration of wealth in the hands of the richest 10 per cent of the population also reinforces widespread poverty.

Any effective reproductive healthcare law must address issues beyond population control—not just about the use of pills, injectibles, condoms and cycle beads. It must focus on making reproductive healthcare services accessible to all women, particularly indigent and poor women workers who have long been excluded from healthcare. It’s the woman’s health, stupid, to borrow from James Carville’s famous epithet.

The poor, particularly women, have always been at the losing end of this debate about population control. Take abortion on demand, for example. Criminalizing abortion has forced pregnant women who do not want to give birth to seek clandestine options. A recent study made by the New York-based Centre for Reproductive Rights found that over half of all pregnancies in the Philippines are unintended and one-third of these pregnancies end in abortion. The same report also said that because of various reasons including rape and dire socio-economic consequences, half a million Filipino women are choosing abortion with more than 1,000 women dying and 90,000 being hospitalized for complications from unsafe abortion.

Making abortion illegal does not stop abortion; it only makes it more dangerous for the health and lives of Filipino women. The Philippines, which owes its Roman Catholic faith to Spain, makes abortion criminal by lifting directly from the old Spanish Penal Code of 1870. Because of high rates of death from unsafe abortion due to its illegality, Spain has already reconsidered its restrictive law and, since 1985, has allowed abortion on certain grounds. In February 2010, Spain went even further in liberalizing abortion by allowing the procedure without restrictions up to 14 weeks and by giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to have abortions without parental consent.

Other predominantly Catholic countries like Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Colombia, Mexico and Portugal have all also allowed abortion on certain grounds.

Whether to allow women to abort is a hot issue that will linger, perhaps even forever. Those who believe in the sanctity of human life in accordance with the teachings of their religion will never be deterred in championing the pro-life cause. Pro-choice activists will do the same. Bridging this great divide will require a rational understanding of social evidence that more and more women today die from unsafe abortions. In the end, the real issue is whether we should deny healthcare as a matter of right to these unfortunate women.

All talk and nothing else

Each time I watch the TV series Mad Men, it reminds me of how the inner circle of advisers to President Benigno Aquino III crudely attempts to market their main man. First, they portrayed him as a crusader against corruption during the election campaign running on the empty mantra of “no corruption, no poverty.” And now, they catapulted him on the United Nations podium as the spokesperson for People Power, as if it were a brand patented by the Aquino family.

Speaking before the 65th UN General Assembly in New York, President Noynoy Aquino enjoined the world to embrace a global version of Filipino People Power in the battle against poverty. As if his mother President Cory Aquino’s ascension to the presidency through the EDSA Revolution was the great equalizer—the total package that could wipe out poverty.

So much for branding.

It’s about time for President Aquino to accept the cruel reality that there are now more poor people in the Philippines than at any other time in its history. Not even his late mother could do anything with the magic of People Power in arresting the rising tide of poverty in the country.

On what moral, political, economic or other grounds then did President Noynoy Aquino invoke that People Power, the one that Filipinos were once proud of and installed his mother to power, could be the vital instrument in achieving “equality and equitable progress in the world?”

Talk is cheap, but not when your government has just received a cheque for US$434 million (P19 billion) as financial assistance from the United States.

The aid was part of an assistance compact under the auspices of the US-run Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who chairs the MCC, said the grant was to be used to build roads and carry out projects aimed at reducing poverty and fighting corruption.

Quite an irony to mention infrastructure and corruption in the same breadth, because our experience in the Philippines would tell us that building roads is a rich minefield for corruption in government.

President Noynoy Aquino was in New York to attend the UN summit on Millennium Development Goals (MDG), an initiative launched by the UN in 2000.

Representatives from all over the world, including heads of states, met to reaffirm their commitment to pursue the MDGs which are targeted for fulfillment by 2015. Here was an auspicious stage for President Aquino to shine by defining his government’s agenda to combat corruption under his mantra of “no corruption, no poverty.” Instead, he blew his chance to be relevant and decided to sell Filipino People Power as a great solution to the world’s social ills.

Does this tell us that he was just running on an empty slogan during the election campaign?

Transparency International (TI), the Berlin-based anti-graft group, has documented cases of corruption and breakdowns in governance as major reasons why many countries are struggling to reach the Millennium Development goals. This was the same group that named former Philippine presidents Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada in the top ten list of most corrupt heads of state in the world.

If President Aquino and his inner sanctum had only found time to read the TI report before proceeding to the UN summit, they could have better appreciated that their campaign slogan of “no corruption, no poverty” would have resonated much more than selling People Power. Transparency International cited hard facts and figures to support its call for governments, donors, and non-governmental organizations to adopt anti-corruption measures in their action plans to reach the Millennium Development goals by 2015.

TI analyzed data from 42 countries where there was a higher incidence of graft and corruption.

For example, TI found out that where more bribes are paid, there is a lower literacy rate among 15- to-24-year-olds—one of the indicators used in tracking progress on the education MDG. It also found out that a rise in reported bribery is linked with higher maternal deaths in 64 countries, regardless of their country’s wealth or investment in health.

According to Transparency International, “corruption is like a regressive tax on needy households that sabotages attempts to eradicate poverty as part of meeting the MDGs.” This is so because poor families suffer more than richer households from demands for small bribes.

TI cited surveys in India where poor people have paid more than $200 million each year to access 11 supposedly-free services, including the police, hospitals, schools and employment benefits.

That sounds and looks like what’s happening in the Philippines.

All President Aquino has to do is to simply gather empirical evidence of the correlation between corruption and poverty, instead of merely mouthing worthless slogans. On the world’s biggest stage, he could have chosen to speak about corruption and how it hampers progress and the attainment of equality. But no, it was safer and better for the sound bites to talk about People Power instead.

When President Aquino returns home from his trip, he had better show to the Filipino people what anti-poverty program his government has, especially since after receiving an infusion of $434 million from the US government to wage his battle against corruption and to reduce poverty.

And should he continue to talk about making use of People Power, he must include the toiling masses, the labourers and farmers in the countryside, not only the influential rich and powerful business sectors of “Imperial Manila,” in mustering the people’s support for any government program to alleviate their conditions.

Otherwise, all the rhetoric about corruption and poverty disintegrates into pure talk and nothing else.

Fiddling with the truth

The wrongdoings of the past administration under former Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo are almost public knowledge that a Truth Commission set up to ferret out the truth becomes totally unnecessary. Conversations in barbershops, chat groups and blogs on the Internet and even among people on the streets have been glued on the Arroyo corrupt government for a long time that the jokes have become stale by now.

Yes, they are just allegations or perhaps mere gossip going around town. But the people are tired of all this talk about prosecuting the former president for her involvement in some of the biggest corruption and election cheating scandals in government since the Ferdinand Marcos era.

President Noynoy Aquino made a promise during the election that he will prosecute those guilty of corruption in the past government. For starters, he could have ordered an investigation through the Office of the Ombudsman, except that the current Ombudsman is an appointee of former President Arroyo. Not a logical choice.

Congress could be the most legitimate venue to conduct a full-scale inquiry. After all, members of Congress are elected representatives of the people and the truth being a public good, they would be doing a great service for the country. But then Gloria Arroyo and her two sons, Mikey and Diosdado, her in-laws, Maria Lourdes Tuazon-Arroyo and Iggy Arroyo, including her former allies during the last administration, are all sitting members of Congress and an inquiry would have to pass approval through the proverbial needle in the haystack. So, fat chance.

Why not go directly to court?

Yes, why not, instead of creating a Truth Commission that sounds grand in scale and invokes comparison to the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) that emerged from civil strife during the 1970s in South America, Africa and Asia. These TRCs, however, were born from a period of repression, and closure was necessary in order to move on to a new peaceful future. Not because the previous government was so heavy-laden with corruption. If it were the modus operandi of every new government, there will be no end to backward-looking investigations and witchhunts. This is why we have elections so corrupt governments can be booted out.

Most commissions or panels of inquiry to investigate prior misconduct in government are initiated by the legislature, not by executive fiat. A mere presidential order revives the old ways of the dictatorship under the Marcos era. The Philippine Congress has created commissions before to inquire on the conduct of government or its officials. Passing the responsibility of the Noynoy Aquino Truth Commission to a bipartisan panel, for example, of elected senators and Congressional representatives, does not seem odd or illogical.

A Truth Commission or a TRC is most suitable and the ideal body to set up when investigating widespread human rights violations or abuses emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war or a dictatorship like that of the Marcos regime. Was a TRC created to investigate the Marcos dictatorial regime in order to record its crimes and human rights abuses and punish those who were responsible?

Upon assuming the presidency after the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos, former President Cory Aquino immediately granted immunity from prosecution to all Marcos officials and generals involved in human rights violations. That was a self-defeatist decision. Investigations were rendered pointless as those responsible were already granted amnesty. No record of human rights abuses was ever documented. And if one relies simply on government reports, we see plenty of revisionism in historical accounts of the Marcos era. No wonder, his surviving wife, Imelda Marcos, and children, Imee and Bongbong, are still around and elected to powerful positions in government.

The present Aquino government seems indifferent to investigating continuing human rights violations and abuses of the military, especially disappearances and extra-judicial killings. For one thing, there are more photo-ops and self-serving media coverage in going after corrupt officials, especially the Big Kahuna in Gloria Arroyo. So, the widows and mothers of those who have disappeared will continue to grieve for not knowing where their children are buried. Those detained will continue to be in jail for mere suspicion of being members or supporters of the NPA or the communist insurgency. All murdered journalists, workers, peasants and students for vigorously protesting against the government will continue to remain as cold statistics. Truth and justice for these people will be set aside; for how long, no one knows.

President Aquino’s Truth Commission pays lip service to the search for truth. The president is playing around with the insular notion that flushing out the truth about corruption during the Arroyo administration is sufficient for Filipinos to deal with their recent past, that is, to establish a historical confirmation that the Arroyo government was corrupt, and to deter government officials from committing the same violations and abuses. Let us remember that it is still hazy and unclear at this stage whether this Truth Commission has the power to impose criminal fines or sentences. Suffice it to say that most commissions of inquiry have no such power, so where’s the justice after all?

Or is this part of the Noynoy Aquino mantra that without corruption, there is no poverty? That public revelation of corruption and the shaming that accompanies it are more than enough to deter further acts of corruption. Therefore, it will be good for the country in the long run because there will be no more poverty.

Either President Noynoy Aquino should have his head re-examined (his opponents during the last election had hinted about his competence to lead) or he fires his adviser who’s been feeding him with this entire gobbledegook about the linear correlation between corruption and poverty.

The U.S. Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, said that establishing an authoritative record of Nazi atrocities is one of the most important legacies of the international war crimes trials following the Second World War. Jackson further said, with “such authenticity and in such detail there can be no responsible denial of these crimes in the future and no tradition of martyrdom of the Nazi leaders can arise among informed people.”

In the case of President Noynoy Aquino, he has chosen the wrong path to find the truth. He could be gambling against the odds of even beatifying Gloria Arroyo into a martyr. Or, perhaps, the idea behind the Truth Commission was really to exonerate Arroyo and her minions, and thereby confirm in the process that corruption is a way of life and an integral part of the Filipino political culture. But didn’t we know this already?

To lull the republic that as a country we have moved beyond years of repression, the Truth Commission becomes a clever subterfuge to make the people believe that corruption is our real conundrum. The truth could be that President Aquino is trying to avoid making a public admission of the gross and systematic abuses of human rights in the country by the government and its military from the Marcos era up until today. This includes the killing of innocent farmers during their peaceful picket at Hacienda Luisita on November 16, 2006, a place very close to the new president’s heart.

If President Noynoy Aquino is dead serious about the truth, he should start by digging in his own backyard.

Noynoy Aquino’s inaugural speech: All sentiment, no substance

One consolation for Philippine President Noynoy Aquino after making his inaugural speech is that most inaugurals are often forgotten almost as they are delivered, with only a few surviving the test of time and becoming part of history and literature. Even U.S. President Barack Obama, a highly accomplished orator and speaker, failed to set the tone of his administration during his inauguration with the famed rhetoric and oratory people had expected from him.

Obama’s inauguration speech was deemed by some well-meaning critics as realistic but not soaring, with very few truly memorable pieces of phraseology, no Kennnedy-esque or Rooseveltian quotations for the ages.

It would be asking too much of Noynoy Aquino to deliver a soaring acceptance speech like that of a Ferdinand Marcos or a Manuel Quezon. Noynoy is not an orator and does not pretend to be one.

As the spokesman of the new president said before the inauguration, Noynoy’s speech will be short, clear, and straight to the point. It was said that Noynoy Aquino wrote the speech himself and made nine revisions to it.

Repeating his social contract with the Filipino people which he pledged during the campaign, Noynoy for the umpteenth time, defines the foundation of his administration: “If no one is corrupt, no one will be poor.” Then he rattled off his series of “No mores” such as no more junkets, no more senseless spending, no more influence peddling, no more patronage politics, no more stealing, no more sirens (“wala ng wangwang”), no more short cuts, and no more bribes.

Noynoy Aquino’s inaugural speech hardly sets the tone or the vision for his government, something we all reasonably expect from an incoming president. Instead of taking the opportunity to articulate his administration’s goals, policy and philosophy, Noynoy simply wallows with populist sentiments and vapid rhetoric with meaningless promises, which, to the minds of those who have heard such empty words, will inevitably be broken anyway.

The new president did not offer much of a window through which one can examine the change of political power in the Philippines. On the contrary, Noynoy Aquino’s speech merely signals the continuation of the failed policies of previous administrations, starting from his own mother’s presidency. It seems obvious that Noynoy Aquino has not learned a valuable lesson from her mother’s uneasy tenure as president.

Appointing to the cabinet the same economic managers who presided over the country’s dismal economic performance during the Cory Aquino presidency ensures the perpetuation of deregulation, tariff liberalization and privatizations. These are the same economic policies continued during the Fidel Ramos presidency and consolidated under the presidencies of Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which constitute the main reason for the country’s economic malaise.

While Cory Aquino reinstated the democratic institutions of free elections, representative government, free press and other civil liberties after the fall of the Marcos repressive dictatorship, her legacy, however, will be forever tainted by the missteps taken by her economic policy advisers. Not only did her economic managers surrender to the demands of the International Monetary Fund and large U.S. banks, they were also responsible for laying the groundwork for deregulation, tariff liberalization and privatization that continued with succeeding administrations.

Foreign debt repayment became the national economic priority of the Cory Aquino presidency, an onerous burden caused by the Marcos regime. Debt servicing had been institutionalized in the Automatic Appropriations Act. This means that the repayment of debt must have the first cut in the annual government budget. During the current economic recession, this policy has drastic consequences because it limits what the government could spend in order to stimulate the economy. Noynoy Aquino will be naturally burdened with the consequences of this policy of servicing foreign debt that was laid down by his mother’s administration, with the help and advice of her economic stalwarts some of whom are now in the new president’s cabinet.

Noynoy Aquino must face the fact that there are now more poor people in the Philippines than at any other time in its history. That this is not simply because of corruption but due to misguided economic policies. The country cannot well afford to have more of the same in the next six years if President Noynoy is serious about delivering the Filipino people from the throes of poverty.

The correlation between corruption and poverty, especially by this present administration, is overblown. No one disagrees with Noynoy Aquino’s assertion that if no one is corrupt, no one will be poor. But this kind of association is ineffectual as a prescription for dealing with the country’s fundamental problem of poverty. Moral leadership is not necessarily a sufficient condition for successful leadership and governance. Foolhardy policies are, and smart and well-groomed technocrats have been responsible for more poverty than corrupt politicians.

If the presidency of Noynoy Aquino does not reverse the course from the structural adjustment policies of the last 30 years, we will never rise from the economic havoc these policies have created. We will continue to witness debt repayment, huge cutbacks in government spending, trade and financial liberalization, privatization and deregulation and export-oriented production.

Unfortunately, President Noynoy Aquino’s inaugural speech only provided us with some glimmer of hope, mostly on the issues of justice and political reform, and almost without hope in uplifting the majority of our countrymen from the quagmire of poverty.

Some would plea to give the new president a chance. See what happens after the first 100 days, they say. As if that is all the time needed to solve our country’s pressing problems.

Noynoy as fighter of corruption

President-elect Noynoy Aquino’s single-minded fixation on the elimination of graft and corruption in government is not surprising at all. His campaign slogan, “None Poor Without Corruption,” proved very effective and won him a plurality of votes over his closest opponents, former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada and Senator Manuel Villar, two candidates tainted by accusations of corruption.

During his short term as president, Erap was impeached because of his involvement in widespread corruption in government. Villar, on the other hand, was hounded by allegations of corruption in connection with a public infrastructure project that ran through a real estate development he owns.

Noynoy’s obsession with corruption is a copycat of former President Diosdado Macapagal’s campaign strategy during the 1961 national elections. One of Macapagal’s major campaign pledges was to wipe out government corruption that proliferated under former President Carlos P. Garcia. As president, Macapagal earned the sobriquet “The Incorruptible.” In an ironic twist of fate, his daughter, outgoing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, was dubbed as the most corrupt president the Philippines has ever had after Ferdinand Marcos.

Now Noynoy Aquino promises to be the nation’s most determined fighter of corruption. This is a pledge Noynoy highlighted in his political platform which he calls his Social Contract with the Filipino People.

During the election campaign, Noynoy Aquino promised to arrest all those who are corrupt. If he was referring to his predecessor and her husband, army generals and other prominent officials of the Arroyo government, it remains to be seen whether Noynoy has the will power to make true his promise. Otherwise, Noynoy is simply blowing hot air.

At least the late president Diosdado Macapagal’s pledge against corruption was tested in the case of the deportation of Harry Stonehill, an American expatriate with a $50-million business empire in the Philippines.

Stonehill was accused of tax evasion, smuggling, and corruption of public officials. But Macapagal erred in deporting Stonehill instead of prosecuting him. His rationale for ordering Stonehill’s deportation was that his continued presence in the country was a distraction and had a corroding influence on national morale, which in retrospect seems suspicious considering the subject was an American, and wealthy and powerful no less.

Macapagal then turned his attention toward the brothers Fernando Lopez and Eugenio Lopez, who had controlling interests in several large businesses. He called the brothers the “Filipino Stonehills” who built their business empires through political power, including corruption of politicians and other government officials.

Macapagal failed to investigate the Lopezes and no charges were brought against them. When Macapagal ran for re-election in 1965, the Lopez brothers threw their political support to Ferdinand Marcos who won the election, with Fernando Lopez as his running mate.

Noynoy Aquino’s seriousness in prosecuting his predecessor and other officials of her government is betrayed by his utter lack of understanding of the challenges of poverty and inequality in the Philippines.

Noynoy’s slogan that blames corruption for the country’s widespread poverty is only a political stratagem. Its purpose is merely to gather votes. Plus, having a good sound bite, it simply denigrates his opponents who were already dragged in the mud by allegations of corruption against them.

Corruption takes centre stage in Noynoy’s political platform that calls for change. His platform states that corruption has a destructive effect on families and communities because it robs children of their protection, nutrition and education; it steals from farmers and workers; and it deters businessmen from investing in our economy. Furthermore, corruption, according to Aquino’s platform, has eroded our national spirit and caused our loss of trust in the democratic institutions initiated by the Cory Aquino’s presidency after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship.

Arguably, there is an element of truth in the debilitating effects of corruption to the economy and to our society as a whole. But to single it out as the substantial cause of poverty is rather naïve and being badly-informed.

Noynoy Aquino majored in economics in college so he should understand that equality is good for growth and makes that growth more effective in reducing poverty.

The exceptional slice of national wealth that is owned by the very rich in the Philippines, and this is a very small percentage of the country’s total population, makes inequality extensive and pervasive. There is chronic poverty in the Philippines as a human consequence of inequality and its compounding effects.

But it seems out-of-fashion nowadays to advocate equality and wealth redistribution, which is also true in richer economies, because it has the connotation of taking the leftist position in the debate continuum. Look at how U.S. President Obama, for example, had been caricatured as being socialist for his health care reforms.

A more preferred source of information over other social weather stations known with leftist leanings, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), has identified the main causes of poverty in the Philippines.

The ADB pointed to the following: low to moderate economic growth for the past 40 years, low growth elasticity of poverty reduction, weakness in employment generation and the quality of jobs generated, failure to fully develop the agriculture sector, high inflation, high levels of population growth, high and persistent levels of inequality (incomes and assets), which dampen the positive impacts of economic expansion, and recurrent shocks and exposure to risks such as economic crisis, conflicts, natural and environmental disasters.

Instead of aiming his saber-rattling against corrupt officials, Noynoy Aquino should understand that to eliminate poverty, his administration must address those causes identified by the ADB.

Due to global recession, the Philippine economy is sinking further as unemployment continues to grow and extreme poverty remains unabated. It is under these circumstances that a social explosion could be expected as working people find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

Noynoy should not wait for his leadership to be tested by military coups, similar to those that beset his own mother’s uneasy tenure.

Time, therefore, is of the essence. Noynoy Aquino must step up to the plate when he assumes the presidency. He should start mapping a coordinated poverty framework and strategy that will help the poor out of their doldrums, instead of grandstanding about his obsession to eliminate corruption. Even if he were successful in eradicating corruption and all its harmful effects to society, it would still not erase poverty on the Philippine map.

During her presidency, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo claimed that the Philippine economy has vastly improved and was growing at a high rate. If that was true, why are the benefits not trickling down to the masses?

Partly, because Arroyo’s economic policies, as with previous administrations, were designed to favour a handful of big business and landowning families. These few families own the largest slice of the country’s national economy.

For instance, Arroyo failed to implement meaningful land reforms citing legal technicalities. The government’s comprehensive land reform program which was started by Noynoy Aquino’s mother, Cory Aquino, had the initial aim of redistributing huge tracts of land from the rich to the poor farmers.

These are the same problems that face Noynoy’s presidency and have contributed substantially to poverty and inequality in the Philippines. If he wants to leave a lasting legacy as president, he should start with the transfer of Hacienda Luisita to its farmers and tenants. His family’s ownership of Hacienda Luisita only reflects the oligarchic control of the national economy by a powerful and wealthy few.

In his Social Contract with the Filipino People, Noynoy Aquino pledges to be different from the Arroyo government whom he accused of making up economic growth statistics which the Filipino people know to be untrue.

Sooner rather than later, Noynoy Aquino needs to match his lofty pronouncements with real and effective leadership and governance, if he wants to eliminate poverty and inequality in our country. Enough with grandstanding as the country’s number one fighter of corruption.