Think tanks, vision, progress

This article is instigated by the remark made by US Ambassador Harry Thomas in my conversation with him two months back — also published in the

STAR

. He said he was surprised there are no think tanks in this country whereas other Asian countries — even Bangladesh — have so many of them.

Of course, there are think tanks; but most of the time, their findings are ignored by this country’s decision makers.

The Up Press And The Agrarian Reform Institute

I am constrained in writing about myself but if only to put it on record, I was involved with at least three.

I have always admired General Carlos P. Romulo not because he was Ilocano but because he was an excellent writer and public speaker. He was also my first teacher in diplomatic protocol. He was ambassador to the United States when I first went there in 1955 on a Smith-Mundt Leader Grant of the US Department of State for a period of three months. I knew General Romulo in Manila for I was then a staff member of the old Manila Times; who wouldn’t know the country’s foremost journalist?

He invited me for breakfast at the US Embassy together with some Washington writers and, it being summer, I had no necktie. He told me get to the embassy early and when he saw me without coat and tie, he sent me back to the Fairfax Hotel near Dupont Circle. And that was when he told me that whenever an ambassador invites me to his embassy for breakfast, lunch or dinner, I must always be properly dressed.

When I returned to Manila in 1964 after a posting in Colombo, Ceylon, as Information Officer of the Colombo Plan Bureau, he was president of the University of the Philippines. I had set up my bookshop and publishing house and who should inaugurate my bookshop and publishing house but General Romulo? And what should be the first title of my publishing house but his book, Identity and Change?

He asked me to teach at UP with some fancy title — I told him I was a college dropout, but never mind; I knew that his actual intention was to have me help him write his speeches. I demurred. I had to pay full attention to my publishing house and new journal, Solidarity.

Then, on reflection, I told him I could set up the University Press. He said the UP already had a press. I said it was a printing press, not a publishing house. I then worked on the proposal on how to establish it, operate it and fund it. I said that it should publish scholarly material not just by the UP academics but including writers who are not academics, who have written manuscripts of “permanent intellectual value.” I told him that, in the US, the university presses not only promote scholarly and scientific work but also provide a venue for academic excellence, for scholars to “publish or perish.”

In preparing the proposal, I obtained materials from the Association of University Presses in America and backgrounders from such venerable institutions as the Oxford and Cambridge University presses in England. General Romulo then asked me to head the new institution but, again, I said I couldn’t because my publishing house demanded my undivided attention.

The other institution I helped set up for the University of the Philippines was the Agrarian Reform Institute in Los Baños. Agrarian reform has long been my personal interest. When Conrado F. Estrella was appointed Department of Agrarian Reform Secretary by President Marcos in 1965, he asked me to be his consultant. I’d known Secretary Estrella since childhood as he came from my hometown, Rosales, in Pangasinan. He became mayor of the town and, later on, governor of the province. He set aside a million pesos from the Department budget for the Institute. I then presented the proposal to both Dean Dioscoro Umali of the Los Baños College and General Romulo who was still UP President. Time passed and nothing happened.

To work on the proposal, on my own I visited several institutions, among them the Land Reclamation Agency in Waginengen, Holland, the Joint Rural Reconstruction office in Taipeh, the Agrarian Reform Institute in Mexico, and a similar office in Tel Aviv.

Then the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome held its conference in Manila. Secretary Estrella tasked me with writing the speeches of Vice President Fernando Lopez who opened the conference, and President Marcos who closed it.

Not a word in either speech was changed; in the President’s closing address, I wrote: “To illustrate our interest in agrarian reform, we will establish the Agrarian Reform Institute in the University of the Philippines.” The following morning, Salvador P. Lopez, who was then UP president, called and said the Institute would be set up immediately.

I intended the Institute to conduct research on agrarian problems, to backstop the Department of Agrarian Reform, to propose legislation in Congress, build a library, and publish the findings of the researchers. But when it was set up, those Los Baños academics mangled the original purpose and made the Institute an academic unit with students pursuing degrees. Now, the Institute is moribund and I have asked the new UP president, Alfredo Pascual, to revive it for the problems of land are constant and we need laws and solutions to resolve changing needs, major issues on land use, transformation, food production and the vexing problem of ancestral domain.

The Foreign Service Institute

In 1962, former Ambassador Rolando Garcia recommended me as Information Officer of the Colombo Plan Bureau in Colombo, Ceylon. The diplomatic posting was for two years with one renewable year. Before proceeding to Colombo, I was assigned as aide to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Emmanuel Pelaez, who I knew personally from the Magsaysay years. The assignment was to prepare me for my diplomatic posting. I looked at the structure of our Foreign Office and saw the need for such an institute. The US Department of State has one and there is also the private Council of Foreign Relations, which many in the United States know as the unofficial Department of State. I also looked at the British Foreign Office and how it was supported by Chatham House, a think tank.

As I formulated it, the Foreign Service Institute would be the think tank for the Department of Foreign Affairs. It would publish a journal devoted to the study of our foreign relations, sponsor ongoing lectures and seminars on foreign relations, establish a library, train officers in protocol and diplomatic practice before they were sent abroad and compile a dossier on upcoming leaders in Southeast Asia. Such a dossier would assist our Foreign Affairs officers in their dialogues with their counterparts and in the promotion of regionalism. It must be remembered always that, in the ‘60s, we were not yet “the sick man” of Southeast Asia but the region’s leading nation.

Secretary Pelaez approved in toto my proposal and had the Institute set up immediately.

My quarterly, Solidarity, became a monthly; it was also a purveyor of ideas, culture and the arts not just for the Philippines but for all of Southeast Asia. I was exhausted going around with a begging bowl; after two decades, it died at the close of the 20th century because it had no support other than what I could get from the defunct Congress for Cultural Freedom in Paris, some American and European foundations, notably Ford and Rockefeller, the Asia Foundation, and my own bookshop. The government subscription given by Education Secretary Onofre D. Corpuz was immediately cut when Marcos declared martial law in 1972.

The last major effort of Solidarity shortly after EDSA I in 1986 was to sponsor a series of seminars attended by the country’s leading intellectuals. The series was concluded by a two-day conference chaired by then UP President Edgardo Angara. The seminars and the conference produced a book titled An Agenda for the 21st Century, funded by the Asia Foundation. It was full of workable, pragmatic recommendations. I printed a thousand copies and distributed almost all of it to government leaders, leading businessmen, educational institutions, and members of Congress.

I bring all this to mind because the other week, I had lunch with John Forbes who recently published that landmark study on Philippine problems, “Arangkada.” For all the hosannas which greeted it, I told John to be ready for disappointment for I have doubts that his recommendations will be attended to by our leaders; they cannot transcend their vaulting egos, their cozy barkadas and ethnicity.

In so many high-level discussions today on how this country can raise itself from the rut and rot caused by an irresponsible elite, technical strategies, foreign investments, and changes in the Constitution are discussed. No one talks about those crucial intangibles like vision, sense of nation and love of country which are the true determinants of progress.

At the birthday celebration of Ambassador Delia Albert and her husband Hans, I was fortunate to sit beside former President Fidel V. Ramos. I told him of our past presidents: only three Ilokanos — Quirino, Marcos and himself — had vision. I am 86, old enough to come to this conclusion. I was already in Manila in high school when Quezon was president. But even visionary presidents can achieve only so much in the six years that they rule. Marcos could have done it, but that vision was aborted. He had excellent think tankers like Cesar Virata, of whom I will write about very soon. Alas, Marcos strayed; this was not just his personal tragedy, it is also ours.

I recalled how President Ramos himself once criticized those Makati businessmen for failing to modernize this country. He should do this more often. I also reminded him how no more than a hundred dedicated Japanese patriots lifted Japan from isolation during the Meiji Restoration in 1886 and, in one generation, modernized Japan and transformed a feudal, agrarian nation without much resources other than its people into a world power.

Can any Filipino leader do this now if he has no vision? Does President Noynoy have a think tank which will provide him with that vision? His recent meeting with those Moro rebel leaders is auspicious. If he does not have a credible think tank outside his barkada, I hope he will read John Forbes’ “Arangkada.” Abangan!