It's hopelessly political

It is terribly frustrating for people in my generation to get their senior citizen cards and see nothing much to hope for in our remaining years. Marcos wasted 12 of our most productive years in a kleptocratic dictatorship and it is painful today’s younger generations don’t even have an appreciation of how horrible it was. Ate Glue then went on to waste another 10 years of our lives that would have been our last chance to see growth and development finally come about in our lifetime. And if you ask why our country turned out to be the basket case we are today, a popular response will no doubt put the blame on our politics and our politicians.

It must be terribly frustrating too for many donor agencies who have poured quite a bit of their taxpayers’ money into our country and see not only a failure to move us up the development ladder, but to see us now worse off than when they started. “Despite the dreams, resources, and good intentions of aid-givers, appalling poverty remains the lot of most people in aid-recipient countries,” is a complaint aired in this new book I am about to review.

The technocrats among us have been increasingly frustrated. Despite their messianic zeal to reform our institutions, a stubborn and powerful elite who see change as a threat to their vested interests always manage to preserve the status quo. Technocrats and donor agencies have joined forces to pour out their sorrows and frustrations in a book. They documented the lessons learned in their many battles to introduce institutional change in the hopes of attaining economic development. It seems not enough change happened to give anyone a sense of accomplishment.

Even the graphics of the book cover, a balloon floating up to the sky, expresses the futility of it all. And thus the title of the book: Built on Dreams, Grounded in Reality: Economic Policy Reform in the Philippines. The dreams part is accurate… the grounded in reality part is more about what these technocrats and aid donors want to believe. I would have titled the book: Built on Dreams, Crushed by Reality.

The book launched last Monday evening is about the central problem of development and how to make it happen. Best of intentions are heartwarming but not enough. Development workers must also be politically street smart if they want to produce better development outcomes than anyone has seen so far.

But while the title of the book and the intentions of the authors may give the impression of an interesting book, I have to warn that the book is far from easy reading. The topics covered and the conclusions made are fairly simple but they make it all sound very oppressively academic.

That is a pity because it should be read by a wider audience of politicians and development workers. There is absolutely no use for technocrats merely talking to other technocrats. I don’t understand why it isn’t written in the same easy readable manner that economist Jeffrey Sachs wrote The Price of Civilization, his current bestseller on what went wrong in today’s America.

What’s so hot about this book? It is fun to see academics and foreign aid agencies count the ways they went wrong. Lesson number one: technical analysis is insufficient to achieve reform. That seems obvious for someone like me who has covered politicians and bureaucrats for decades… I almost wanted to say Duh!

Lesson number two: political economy analysis and political action are equally important. I think I learned that lesson as a 16-year old undergrad in the discussion groups or DGs of the Kabataang Makabayan and the Samahan ng Demokratikong Kabataan. These technocrats must be pretty sheltered people.

Lesson number three: committed local leadership is the principal reform driver. Look for local leaders, referred to as development entrepreneurs, who take personal responsibility for achieving development outcomes Ah, this one should have been obvious if they were monitoring the Magsaysay Awardees through the years like DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo.

Lesson number four: development agencies can play critical supportive roles but need to move towards less rigid and more locally-owned projects…. But we have been complaining through the years about aid agencies dictating how projects are implemented and the strings attached to the assistance they give! Now they finally admit the error of their ways.

The emerging consensus, the book’s first chapter points out, seems to be that a healthy understanding of the politics of change is needed. Furthermore, it says “greater modesty among aid agencies is in order because despite the sincere efforts exerted, groping is still largely the norm” in the conduct of development projects. Now they are talking but still, don’t expect too much change in this area.

The stated goal of the book is “to unpack the process and distill lessons from successful and unsuccessful reform episodes drawn from the Philippines.” It then focuses on five so-called successful reform cases: introducing competition and liberalization in telecommunications, civil aviation, and sea transport, the privatization of the water service in the capital city, and the passage of a property rights law to allow for faster administrative titling of residential lands. I honestly think all those cases cited, with the possible exception of telecoms and maybe MWSS water, are still work in progress. But even in telecoms, the fight continues to prevent a return to monopoly, virtual or real.

Two unsuccessful cases are examined: reforming the tax administration agency and a government corporation involved in the grain-rice sector. But this is to be expected because reform in these agencies goes against the interest of the bureaucrats and their private sector supporters.

If there is a key lesson learned by development workers as discussed by the book, it is the need to be mindful of the politics of it all. “The political settlements framework puts emphasis on the concept of power, how it is distributed among competing and cooperating groups, and how it is used in pursuit of group interests.”

The book goes on to say that “the cases of reform initiatives documented confirm the view that the process of reform is a political equivalent of a war— protracted even in the most favorable of circumstances, unpredictable in the extreme, and subject to the vagaries of the fickle political winds. Reform advocates who hope to do more than stir the pot cannot avoid mastering the formal and informal rules of the local political game. Development agencies are increasingly interested in incorporating politics into their technical assistance programs.”

Oh… that sounds like interference in internal affairs if foreign aid agencies get political in their programs. But unless they do, they will just be throwing their taxpayers’ money with no expectations of good outcomes. As it is, Rep. Ron Paul, a Republican presidential hopeful has already declared that he wants to cut foreign aid programs because it merely gives the money of poor American taxpayers to the rich elite in developing countries. It is difficult to deny there is at least a tinge of truth in that view.

We have no choice but to recognize the reality that the institutional change necessary for development to finally take root here is a painfully slow process specially for us. Those in my generation who do not have the patience of academicians, can just be resigned to never seeing the dawn of progress and development within our lifetime. 

But it amused me to hear Dr. Raul Fabella, national scientist and former dean of the UP School of Economics, end his book launch speech urging his audience not to lose hope in “the surprising power of small changes.” A hopeful economist who just edited a book on our failures simply made my day.

The book is published by The Asia Foundation with support from the United States Agency for International Development and AusAID. It was edited by an editorial team composed of Raul V. Fabella, Jaime Faustino, Mary Grace Mirandilla-Santos, Paul Catiang and Robbie Paras. Inquiries for copies of the book may be directed to the local office of Asia Foundation.

Airport blues

Pinoys have a way of finding humor amidst the most emotional of situations. Here is a text message that must have increased the bottom lines of the telcos.

P-Noy to Ate Glue: Kung gusto mong umalis doon ka sa airport ng tatay mo… wag dito sa airport ng tatay ko.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. He is also on Twitter @boochanco