Poverty is not the problem

It is remarkable how most countries, faced by similarly debilitating crises, manage to develop while a few stagnate or even deteriorate. The Philippines would do well to reflect and learn from the examples of Korea, Thailand and Malaysia among the developing countries and the US, Japan, Germany and Singapore among the developed ones.

In these countries, whether we refer to the depression of the 1920s or the economic and financial crises derailing economies since the late 1990s, a major component of national recovery — whether already attained or prospectively unfolding — is the ability of the political leadership to recognize the fundamental sources of its recurring problems, address these problematic roots by willfully paying the necessary political costs and, finally, build cumulatively on economic and political gains over a period of at least 25 to 30 years. The last part of this progressive dynamic emphasizes the need for institution- building and the maintenance of structures and processes enabling economic and political gains to endure.

The Philippines has not moved beyond the initial stage of recognizing the root cause of its crises. The last State of the Nation Address (SONA) affirms that government as well as two other major power brokers in Philippine society were surprised by the May 2001 Labor Day march to Malacañang. Its emotional intensity and physical violence shocked the government authorities and induced some of them — together with their counterparts in business and the Church — to publicly apologize for neglecting the well-being of mostly poor Filipinos across the years.

The sight of powerful politicians, businessmen and priests acknowledging their guilt in public must have warmed the hearts of quite a few people in this country. Yet, in the diagnostic statements of these influential and publicly apologetic eminences, poverty continues to be touted as the root challenge to the political stability and overall development of Philippine society. This is probably incorrect.

Poverty is most certainly a crucial problem, but the recent May Day protest goes much deeper in rooting the national challenge. The nation’s most serious problem is not simply having so many poor people, but having an overly visible, much-celebrated and grossly insensitive few flaunt their overwhelming propertiedness.

Poverty contributes much to it but the Philippines’ core problem is not so much poverty per se as a highly developed — and now much provoked — sense of social justice among so many impoverished Filipinos. Democratic education contributes immensely to this properly human sense, scientific technology — media and TV in particular — facilitates and magnifies it, and regime politics, in confronting this popular sense, is left only with stark alternatives — repression or liberation.

The Arroyo administration pledges to battle poverty. This is an admirable and necessary commitment given the times and our circumstances. Yet, the greater challenge has always been to war relentlessly against blatant social injustice in this country. The high and the mighty will have to do better than to offer heartwarming apologies and the reassuring promises of an avowedly patriotic leadership. They will have to share more of themselves, their lives and their properties with a long deprived and now clearly restless people.

Genuine sharing such that, paraphrasing Rousseau, no Filipino becomes so poor as to be forced to sell himself/herself, or so rich as to be able to buy another — that has always been the deepest root of our national problems. Historically, we have had a long tradition of selling and buying people in this country. This transactional process has predictably left the Philippines with exceedingly few human beings.

For better or for worse?

Note: This piece is a revised, expanded version of a thinkpiece I initially prepared for the Institute for Development and Economic Analysis (IDEA), a non-stock, non-profit thinktank specializing on econometric and other policy research.