I keep wondering why everything that is wrong with this country is blamed on Marcos and Duterte and not the political bloc which was in power for thirty years. Marcos was in power for twenty-one. Duterte six. That's a total of twenty-seven. You don't need philstar.com/opinion/2021/0…
to have a PhD in any discipline to analyze what went wrong with the Philippine economy. You just need to read history and analyze the political structure. The Spanish and American periods saw the Philippines producing coconut oil, abaca and sugar. These were the main exports.
Manila then was the Pearl of the Orient. A trading outpost similar to Hong Kong with a large expatriate community of Europeans and Americans. It was a plantation-style economy which was nothing but a modern version of fief and serf in medieval Europe. The monarchy was the
Catholic Church. What was not manufactured was imported. Was there an economic policy in place by the Commonwealth government? None. That was dictated by the American colonial masters. After World War II, the Americans upped and left. But they retained parity rights for their
businesses and kept their military bases. Then as now, economic activities were concentrated in Luzon. Visayan and Mindanao housed the large plantations. Politicians and the oligarchs were busy rebuilding the wealth they lost during the war. Pre-war, the Philippines had no
manufacturing sector. Post-war, it was the Chinese who set-up what was viable to be produced locally. The only time an economic and infrastructure development plan was in place was when Marcos was elected. Post-war, the country had to deal with a communist insurgency. By the time
the 60s rolled in, it was back. Then there was the Muslim separatist rebellion. Both of these were instigated by Ninoy Aquino. Marcos declared martial law and put forth an economic development policy anchored on the New Society - Ang Bagong Lipunan. Why did Marcos fail? Oil price
shocks in 1973 and 1979 and the fact that the only lender of development funds was the IMF-WB which was an American-controlled institution. It didn't help that by 1976, the US wanted Marcos out for not renewing their parity rights and shortening the US military bases agreement
shortly thereafter. Cory's tumultuous administration was wracked by political instability, labor unrest and military adventurism. Ramos was able to restore a semblance of order. Philippines 2000 was the vision but it was rudely cut short by the Asian financial crisis of 1997.
Erap was ousted by the ruling power bloc despite the overwhelming support of the masses which catapulted him to the Presidency. It again fell on GMA to restore order which she did, despite the fact that she was a party to the instability to begin with. We all know what happened
in recent history. Think about it, there wasn't enough monies in the economy in the 1950s that the Cojuangco clan had to borrow money from Manufacturers Hanover Bank to purchase Hacienda Luisita from Tabacalera. Whatever industries Filipinos and and Chinese-Filipino
industrialists put up, shut down during the post-Marcos period because of labor unrest triggered by leftist-militant groups identified with the CPP-NPA-NDF. How can the economy grow when there is no power supply? After that came the high cost of power. All of the Marcos
development plans were thrown in the garbage can. No investment in infrastructure projects. Whatever projects were there was controlled by the oligarchs. Even if foreign investors wanted to come in, they were precluded by the Constitutional limitations on business ownership. This
is why our economy is consumption-driven. Demand is fueled by OFW remittances and BPOs. We don't export agricultural commodities because our packaging industry isn't as modern as our ASEAN neighbors. It was only recently that a petrochemical plant was established but its output
is still short for the demand. Its convenient for Masigan to lay the blame on Marcos and Duterte when this is farthest from the truth. He should stick to selling popcorn which his family imports. That's where they made their money on. Popperoo. Might as well be Pooperoo given the
crap he comes up with with his economic "analysis."
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MLQ3 makes much of the old political party conventions to select national candidates. Truth is these were just for show as it was essentially imposed upon by the Americans during the Commonwealth period. But that was also a period of monolithic rule as the opinion.inquirer.net/142281/candida…
party in power was controlled by his adoptive grandfather El Mestizo, Manuel Quezon. It was MacArthur who ordered Manuel Roxas to put up the Liberal Party. Collaboration with the Japanese was the major issue then and post-independence politics dictated that the veritable pound of
flesh be extracted. Not that Roxas was clean himself. It was just that he was fortunate enough to obtain MacArthur's anointment. Roxas went on to defeat Sergio Osmeña in the 1946 election. The Americans then had their puppet government in place. The 1935 Constitution was even
It was inevitable that Javad comes up with this comparison given the most recent surveys having the Manila Mayor in the number two slot after the Davao City Mayor. Javad's comparison fails because Isko is just about to complete his first term while opinion.inquirer.net/142237/isko-vs…
Daughterte has been in office as Vice-Mayor or Mayor since 2007. Isko was a Councilor or Vice-Mayor then. It is but natural to compare the two. Daughterte is a lawyer. Isko managed to complete his education when he transitioned to politics from showbiz. As Javad notes, Isko tends
to be performative while Sara is mostly stoic. She has charm and charisma but is not in the news cycle 24/7 or 25/8, as Isko is on social media. If you believe the Chief Political Analyst that is Antonio Contreras, Isko's voter base trumps Daughterte. But that is as per their
Afghanistan and the Delta variant. The US quietly pulled out of Afghanistan last week. It was actually more sneaking out as the last Americans pulled out under the cover of darkness. The Americans left behind the Afghans who supported their war against the philstar.com/opinion/2021/0…
Taliban, which was also their own creation at the time it was the USSR ehich invaded that country. The Afghans have again proven their mettle against a superpower. They have now defeated the US and Russia one after the other. So much for the fight against terrorism which was the
US battlecry when they justified the war with Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is also in shambles despite the continuing US presence. The US can't afford a total pullout just yet because of the Iranian threat. The Afghanistan withdrawal serves a warning to US allies throughout the
Constantly amazed by his logic. A political scientist with a PhD who reasons as he does should be stripped of his doctoral degree. Surveys are based on science because the discipline of statistics is involved. As such, there is the survey design made by manilatimes.net/2021/07/20/opi…
a statistician or a data analyst. It has to be totally random in order for the results not to be skewed. If skewed then the purpose of the survey is defeated. Not all surveys are correct. Think of Hillary Clinton's pollsters who had her leading by 10 points in the 2016 election.
Election night had Hillary losing to Donald Trump in what was considered a major upset. Last night, I read an article about a statement made by the national group of pollsters in the US saying they made a mistake in their surveys for Congressional races. This is why the
It's not really the early bird which catches the worm aphorism which allies in the face of the Lacson-Sotto tandem but more of a calculated risk in taking on the daunting challenge of running for the two highest posts in the land. In 2015, the news cycle businessmirror.com.ph/2021/07/15/the…
was occupied by candidates who wanted to get PNoy's anointment. There was Poe and Cayetano in the headlines. The former because of the case questioning her citizenship while the latter was jockeying to become Roxas' running mate as gratuity for his demolition job on Binay. The
situation is different today not only because of the pandemic but also due to the changed political landscape. Duterte broke the political template with the strategy he employed in 2015. It was political striptease at its best. When he finally decided to run, he seized control of
Banayo thinks that an amendment of the Constitution solve the the problem of political turncoats. I don't agree. We've seen what happened with the Nacionalista and Liberal parties in the past and those which were organized for the 1992 election. Only NPC manilastandard.net/opinion/column…
survives with a relative measure of clout because Boss Danding deemed it necessary to provide financing every election cycle. But Boss Danding is gone. It doesn't look like RSA is interested in NPC because his financial resources aren't as deep as the original patron. Other
parties represent business interests such as the NUP which is identified with Ricky Razon. The same is true with the Manila Standard which Razon bought from Andres Soriano IIIss Anscor group. The other parties are only hollow shells like corporate holding entities. LDP has only