Decay

It is not only our school system that appears seriously deteriorated. Most of our other vital institutions seem to be in decay as well.

That is not very encouraging news. In the present context of intense global competition, weak institutions constitute a severe handicap to our ability to prosper.

Capital is not the primary factor of progress. Capital moves from one place to another depending on the reliability of laws, the effectiveness of enforcement, the predictability of rules, the quality of labor and the sustainability of governance systems.

In a world where capital is mobile and technology is portable, weak institutions spell failure for national economies.

Last Thursday, I mentioned in this space the horrendous results of DepEd’s own test results of senior high school students. Those results show that less than 1 in 20 high school graduates have mastery of the basic areas of skills and knowledge that the educational system is supposed to deliver.

There is an upside to the nationwide test. The top performers turned out to be provincial high schools in really distant localities.

The only credible explanation for that is that the more distant the locality, the greater the tendency for the school to become the center of community life. The school is cared for by the community.

That insight jives well with the current thrust of the DepEd to involve the community in rehabilitating the schools. That program of devolving ownership of the schools to the community has yielded very good results. Billions worth of volunteered labor time and contributed resources have partly compensated for the serious shortages of funding that pushed our schools into a cycle of decay.

But even as we contemplate the critical condition of our schools, the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) released the results of a survey of judicial systems it conducted recently.

The PERC survey showed a steep decline in the rating of our judicial system from the point of view of business executives. The respondents observed that in the Philippines, "laws are not built so much on precedents as on quicksand."

That is not a healthy perception. It is a severe appraisal about the unreliability of our legal system and the uncertainty that implies.

We have heard enough about judicial corruption and listened to many stories about the sheer incompetence of some of those who sit as judges in some of our courts. During Estrada’s time as president, he condemned "hoodlums in robes" and called on the courts to be more introspective about the issuance of TROs.

That was during a time when stories proliferated about TROs being sold, a time when losing bidders resorted to freezing the process by seeking a TRO as a matter of course. That was a time when courts became heavily involved in business decisions and economic policies, declaring that this industry should locate in this province and not in another one. That was a time when a Supreme Curt justice no less had to retire in a hurry after revelations about judicial decisions being peddled.

The low rating given our justice system is not surprising in the wake of numerous and truly startling decisions that intervened in the decisions made about awarding service contracts – and in the wake, too, of some valid but discomforting rulings reversing some large contracts on the ground that they were adverse to public interest.

These decisions were probably just. But they also severely undermined the confidence of investors about the certainty to contracts entered into with our government and even our corporations.

Investments, we know, will, all things being equal, tend to nestle in societies where the law is plain and clear, were they are not reversed or twisted for political expediency or because the other agencies of governance failed to do their part in ensuring the integrity of our processes. In that consideration, the declining confidence in the reliability of our judicial system had serious implications on our ability to attract investments to nestle here and provide jobs for our people.

As at DepEd, a comprehensive program of reform is also being undertaken by the judicial system at the initiative of the Supreme Court and with technical help coming from a number of sources of official development assistance. There has been some improvement in the quality of the bench and less stories about TROs being procured. But a convergence of factors, including truly flawed government contracts and constitutional provisions that open the doors to judicial interventionism, continue to haunt the reliability of the legal system.

Much work still has to be done to raise the quality of our legal system and judicial processes. That work cannot be at the instance of the political leadership given the independence of the judicial branch.

But it should be high on the common national agenda to improve the quality of our institutions. That is vital to improving our competitiveness as a society. Vital, therefore, to improving our chances for rising from the bog of immense poverty.

Goodbye, Teddy

I woke up yesterday to truly terrible news: Teddy Benigno has left us.

Teddy was a monumental figure in Filipino journalism and it was an honor for me to write in the same section as this man. We diverged on some areas of opinion but agreed on most.

I saw Teddy most regularly at the Edsa People Power Commission, where we both serve. Whenever he was in attendance, Teddy overwhelmed us with his passionate thoughts on the state of things.

Passion never seemed to exhaust him. We saw that in his writing. And, as most great writers do, he lived as he wrote.

We will miss you, Teddy. We will miss the intensity with which you pursued your causes, the intensity with which you held on to your ideas, the courage with which you stood by your belief.

Be in peace, Teddy. There will be others to keep your candles lighted in the dark nights that sometimes befall us.