Corazon Aquino's Poverty Pimps
McGurn, William
William McGurn CORAZON AQUINO'S POVERTY PIMPS Ferdinand and Imelda may be long gone, but the Philippines remains the welfare queen of Asia, hooked on policies that brought the country to ruin in...
...They have failed in everything, so all they have left is to try to eliminate poor people instead of poverty...
...Most people here, however, have their own way of dealing with meddlesome bureaucrats...
...This in turn led to the usual frauds and inefficiencies...
...But a funny thing happened...
...Or return it and you owe us nothing...
...In William McGurn is the Washington bureau chief of National Review...
...In her state of the union address last year, Mrs...
...In addition, the government controls energy prices through its Oil Price Stabilization Fund, which this year will People Politics Manila W hen a Filipina housewife in her trademark yellow dress was carried into Malacanang Palace in 1986 under the banner of People Power, hope was that she meant it...
...after all, few investors are going to pump in substantial amounts of money when they won't have any control over it...
...Marconomics lives...
...Her rallying cry had particular resonance here, in that the Marcos regime had thrown in its lot with the evangelicals of foreign aid, whose first article of faith was that the world had reached its quota of Filipinos...
...Although most attention has centered on the Marcoses and their venality, it's hard to avoid the implication for the banks: either they knew what was going on and didn't say anything, or they didn't know that billions were being ripped off right from under their noses...
...Development has been just another word for scam," says social worker Mitos S. Rivera...
...The reason: among those seated were some prominent critics of the American presence in the Philippines, including an Aquino cabinet official or two...
...Fund for Population Activities (which lost its U.S...
...All because of paper clutter...
...All along the perimeter of the sprawling grounds here at Morong Point, tropical brush creeps up the rusting chain-link security fence...
...The most egregious pandering to the monopolies is the continued failure to lift the 40 percent cap on foreign equity that eliminates potential competitors from abroad...
...Aquino has maintained subsidies for oil, upheld caps on foreign investment, made the tax curve more progressive, retained import restrictions, and proscribed competition in the name of crackpot schemes such as a Philippine "people's car...
...A large part is even psychological...
...Yet the Asian Development Bank was the only one to cut off funding to Marcos, and this didn't come until 1985...
...colonialism everywhere—Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the American Virgin Islands...
...At this meeting donors decide aid levels and what policies they want in return, with implications for everything from government spending to tariffs and interest rates...
...When Imelda Marcoswas then appointed governor, it became clear that the reason for the merger was not to increase efficiency but to concentrate all spending decisions in Malacanang Palace...
...If you believe the talk coming out of Washington, this has all changed...
...The basic difference from the past is that back then we had no centralized, systematic review of projects," says economist Charito Arrida...
...C Nlaga/ine's Editor's Choice Award UnionSquareware 27 St...
...This arrangement enabled him to pad costs of such projects as the Friendship Highway by as much as 10 to 15 percent, happily picked up by the Japanese trading firms handling the work and then funneled back to Marcos and his cronies as kickbacks...
...There's a bias toward government in the aid industry," says one high-ranking U.S...
...Even worse are the secret deals with a select group of businesses...
...Base Motives Mandaluyong, Metro Manila t a recent dinner here at the residence of Jaime Cardinal Sin for a departing U.S...
...Many of those who were "sterilized" thus turned out to be women in their fifties, and Placido Mapa recalls how cabinet meetings were enlivened by reports that condoms were turning up as balloons at town fiestas...
...Aquino's wish to impose eighteen new taxes...
...Now, at a time when East Berlin has torn down its wall and even Deng Xiaoping acknowledges the importance of the profit motive, the idea that all that's keeping Manila from becoming another Hong Kong is better central planning is disheartening enough...
...Now we are trying to restore liberty to the economic sphere," he says...
...Fruit markets open early and close late...
...for its presence...
...Aquino conceded that her administration has done little for the worst-off of her countrymen, a fact confirmed by the depressing number of street urchins lying in wait at every corner to beg spare pesos from motorists stopped at traffic lights...
...Australians building roads to serve remote rural areas tell how villagers thought that the real purpose was to make it easier for Marcos's army to swoop down on them...
...Congress's decision last year to slash $96 million from the Bush Administration's $481 million request for Manila, has opened a few Filipino eyes...
...Then, still full of smiles, they broke into a touching rendition of "America the Beautiful...
...Almost immediately, for example, Imelda used her influence to build a string of luxury hotels the country didn't need, a huge cultural center it couldn't afford, and a number of "beautification" projects that often meant shoving poor people out of sight...
...This summer Mrs...
...At least now we know what our priorities are...
...There may be something to that...
...Nevertheless, an administration spokesman tells me that it's still necessary to keep "key industries" such as energy under government control...
...M anila's shortcomings are all the more painful when set against the phenomenal changes now occurring in Eastern Europe...
...Partly to prop her up, partly as a not-so-subtle bribe to keep the U.S...
...In sharp contrast, Mrs...
...What Squarenote does for you is to collect all your information into one accessible, printable, sortable index card file...
...Aquino has only kept her country in thrall to the multilateral lending agencies...
...Original plans called for the Bataan plant to deliver 620 megawatts of power a year to a country now in the throes of a severe energy crunch...
...That's precisely what rankles soi-disant Philippine nationalists, and may explain why in his stage spoof of U.S...
...All it's meant for the Philippines is meetings on poverty held in five-star hotels...
...In fact, since 1974 the real Philippine budget has been set not by the president but by the Consultative Group, at an annual meeting attended by the Philippines' largest donors (now expanded with MAI) and chaired by the World Bank...
...Call now...
...diplomat, a Filipino choir of a half-dozen girls and one boy gathered to entertain the assembled...
...aid officer in Manila...
...The anti-people brigade like to portray themselves as Children of Light trying to impose reason on a hidebound Catholic population, but even a little honest reflection would show that it was the same anti-growth superstitions of the foreign-aid establishment that got the Philippines in its present troubles in the first place...
...ECS, Ilion, NY...
...The tension was broken, and the crowd took up the applause...
...William McGurn CORAZON AQUINO'S POVERTY PIMPS Ferdinand and Imelda may be long gone, but the Philippines remains the welfare queen of Asia, hooked on policies that brought the country to ruin in the first place...
...Just days before these particular negotiations began, for example, USAID suddenly came through with a $40 million grant for population control to Alran Bengzon's Department of Health...
...WMcG 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1990 account for about 15 percent of the government's projected $2.4 billion deficit...
...Leaving aside the decision to close the Bataan plant—many here believe the "safety violations" found had more to do with politics than engineering—the Aquino administration had no contingency plans to make up the shortfall in the energy supply the plant's shutdown would cause...
...Instead of really opening up the economy, all the MAI does is make a few feints to the private sector, give local governments more of a say in projects (which might be welcome if this replaced rather than supplemented Manila's approval), and impose new regulations to prevent Marcos II...
...Called the Multilateral Aid Initiative (MAI), it has already pledged $3.3 billion in aid for this year alone and this time, say officials, Things Will Be Different...
...Just mention this ad, and we'll send you a copy of Squarenote to try, at our risk, for 30 days...
...In deference to the guest of honor the group opened with selections from Oklahoma!, West Side Story, and The Music Man, followed by several local folk songs, all delivered with poise and good humor...
...military presence in the region (see "Base Motives," p. 17), some nineteen donor nations and eight multilateral agencies have just begun to disburse from a brand new, multibillion-dollar "mini-Marshall Aid Plan" for the Philippines...
...Four years ago, the advocates of People Power vowed to get the government out of business...
...You would never know from any of this talk that the U.S...
...Congressman Solarz says MAI is absolutely essential to rebuilding the Philippines, and Senator Lugar goes so far as to call it a "model" for American aid...
...Although Washington talks a good game, in practice it does rely on the cash register to get its way, which is why there is a certain amount of cynicism about the American argument...
...representative Richard Armitage told Manglapus: "I am not an accountant and I do not stand next to a cash register when conducting foreign relations...
...Call us now at 617 277 9222, or write us at the address below...
...As Prof...
...Well, that's not quite true...
...In preparation for the IMF-World Bank Conference in Manila in October 1976, for example, some 60,000 squatters were relocated to areas far from their jobs and former homes...
...Agency for International Development, the Asian Development Bank, and a host of smaller groups...
...military facilities, begun only a few days before, showed early on that Washington and Manila remain deadlocked...
...To be sure, America does have a lot to answer for, but not in the way Mr...
...Taxi drivers work all day in snarling traffic, clearing only a few pesos more than their gas costs...
...Manglapus has been stomping his feet and demanding a bigger allowance...
...And in the case of the Japanese, projects are little more than advertising campaigns for Japan, Inc...
...And countless thousands of Filipinos go abroad in search of the most menial work, just to put bread on the table back home, part of a Philippine diaspora of perhaps six million people...
...It doesn't speak all that well for Cory, either...
...Westinghouse denies the charges of malfeasance, but while lawyers on two continents sort out who owes what to whom, interest charges are costing Filipino taxpayers more than $350,000 a day...
...In Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and so on, they understand quite clearly that whatever the personal cupidity of leaders like Wojciech Jaruzelski, Erich Honecker, and Gustav Husak, the real culprit was a socialist economic system that centralized all decisions and power in a few hands, making corruption inevitable...
...Built by Westinghouse, the $2.4 billion plant was funded in part by almost $650 million in loans and guarantees from the U.S...
...Because of their strength as creditors—multilaterals and bilaterals hold more than half the $26 billion foreign debt—they usually get what they want, whether it's setting deficit targets or devaluing the currency...
...In 1966, when he was first elected president (and when the Philippines was, after Japan, the most prosperous nation in Asia), the country's foreign debt was roughly $500 million...
...But as the privatization program approaches its deadline this year, the government has managed to sell off barely forty-seven of the 117 state-owned or state-controlled firms and only 153 of 399 non-performing firms it inherited when they went into default...
...In 1972, World Bank figures show the figure was still a low $1.9 billion...
...Culpability also rests with a still unaccountable foreign aid establishment that kept the money tap open even when the fraud and inefficiency became obvious...
...Japanese aid was especially easy to steal, because the Japanese have no scruples about bribery and OECF allowed Marcos to choose his own contracts without bidding...
...Filipino politicians have felt free to indulge in the most shameless demagoguery, secure in the knowledge that whatever they did Big Daddy America would bail them out in the end...
...like the card files you have used for years...
...involvement in the Philippines, Manifest Destiny: An Evening of Yankee Panky, Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus has the American "Father Figure" slain...
...Wittingly or not, this played right into the hands of the Marcoses...
...We've come a long way, but there are still many problems...
...American colonialism in the Philippines has left a legacy of giant welfare dependency, the same sorry legacy of U.S...
...The walls are down in Eastern Europe, Hernando de Soto is all the rage in Latin America, but at Malacanang Palace they scarcely seem to have noticed...
...In terms of government spending, for example, between 85 and 91 percent of all state expenditures (and consequently services) come from the national government, which means that national congressmen sitting in Manila have more of a say in local projects than local officials in the area...
...The foreigners got their way, but instead of a reduction in the birth rate what the Philippines got was an explosion of staff and resources devoted to that goal...
...In other slums Mrs...
...We are making a special offer to readers of the American Spectator who have been among our most loyal users and buyers for years...
...Yet theyoffer few specifics about reforms apart from the vague idea that things must be better with Marcos gone...
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...Consequently, the newly elected democratic governments of the East have set about decentralizing their systems, slashing restrictions on trade with the rest of the world, moving toward convertible currencies, liberalizing imports, and, most painful, phasing out subsidies to mainstay industries such as steel and shipbuilding...
...Real life is somewhat less heroic, of course, in that far from slaying Uncle Sam, Mr...
...C ertainly the talent and willingness to work hard is here...
...The result has been almost daily brownouts in Manila, which in April even led to an experiment with "powerless Mondays...
...The rest of the world is leaving us behind," sighs one bureaucrat in Manila, comparing the tearing down of economic and political walls in Eastern Europe with a Manila Bulletin headline announcing Mrs...
...A good part of the problem stems from Washington's penchant for trying to win loyalty through dollar diplomacy, which not only debilitates aid recipients but subjects American foreign policy to periodic bouts of extortion...
...They don't explain how it could have happened, a question best directed at members of the international aid community such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank, Japan's Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF), the U.S...
...Our job was to have a 'pipeline' of projects ready for approval whenever the World Bank came around...
...As the choir delivered its last sweet notes Cardinal Sin, ever the gracious host, stood up to clap his hands in appreciation...
...It was as if a dark cloud had passed over the room, as conversation at each of the two dozen or so dinner tables gradually stilled...
...Worse still, at a time when the Philippines badly needs all the foreign investment it can get, national regulations requiring full pay even when the brownouts cut the workday in half have led to some twenty foreign manufacturers threatening to close up shop altogether...
...Today the optimism that marked the People Power revolution has evaporated, and with it many would-be investors...
...It is fair-weather friends and economic basket cases like Greece and the Philippines who demand ever higher "rents" from the U.S...
...Try Clean up your desk and briefcase...
...The Car Development Program, for example, gives a number of Philippine auto-makers (subsidiaries of Japanese firms such as Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi) exclusive rights to import certain auto parts in the quest for a national "people's car," the Philippine version of the Yugo, the curious argument being that eliminating competition will somehow lower the price...
...In fact, the most striking aspect of Philippine life today is that the centralized and exploitative system put into place by Marcos has survived relatively intact...
...Apart from the pernicious effect of funding population control, the grant strengthened Bengzon's hand within the Aquino cabinet at the expense of more pro-American (not to mention pro-market) elements, and the suspicion here is that the $40 million will go not to reduce the birth rate but to build up Bengzon's political machine...
...You can't find things when you need them...
...A good number of Filipinos still lack basics such as electricity or plumbing, and the World Bank reckons that as many as two-thirds of the country's 57 million people live below the poverty line, a number equal to the population of 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1990 California...
...Small wonder, then, that many folks here, particularly those who have worked out in the field, believe that foreign aid is a malicious joke...
...one swoop it increased our debt from twenty to twenty-five percent, and the whole thing was done in secret...
...The foreigndebt is down somewhat, to $26 million, about as far as you can go by squeezing every last peso from an already impoverished people...
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...Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y...
...Squarenote gathered all the research, organized it, and even printed out my lecture notes...
...The moment has come to choose between the multinationals or the multilaterals: between an economy open to competition and a closed system that leaves them in thrall to the same technocrats who got them in this mess in the first place...
...rr oday the aid agencies admit the 1 failure of past efforts, arguing simply that there were not enough controls...
...Like a stripped-down automobile in the Bronx, the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant stands bleak and abandoned alongside the Bagat Highway, another expensive development failure...
...Manila reckons that the Pentagon is not about to give up all the strategic and logistic advantages of its Subic Bay Naval Station over a measly few million dollars...
...For this reason, there are even some conservatives in the Philippines who think that an American withdrawal from here might in the end be the best thing for both countries...
...But the diminished threat from the Soviet Union, together with the U.S...
...At the headquarters for NEDA, a multi-story bureaucracy crammed with planners setting targets and priorities that individual consumers and producers set for themselves in a free society, a spokesman says that what separates the MAI from past efforts is that the Philippinegovernment now has more of a say in choosing what projects get off the ground...
...Inasmuch as doctors were often paid per operation, and incentives such as transistor radios were offered to men in exchange for vasectomies, there were plenty of built-in temptations for hanky-panky...
...President Bush has appointed his own special representative to the effort, former attorney general Elliot Richardson, and the money has just started flowing...
...More important, the idea that countries develop by cutting down on the number of potential producers rests on shaky economic grounds, particularly in Asia, where places such as Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong have managed spectacular growth despite being far more crowded than the Philippines...
...If you come in with foreign assistance you are immediately suspect because of what happened with past population control efforts," says Linda Valenzona, an aide to the minister of social welfare and development...
...But today the plant is closed, never having produced a single watt of electricity...
...In Development Debacle, a left-wing critique of World Bank policies in the Philippines, the authors show how in 1975 the Bank supported the consolidation of four cities and thirteen municipalities into Metro Manila...
...Alongside the beggars at every street corner are Filipino hawkers in shorts and flip-flops, small-time entrepreneurs whostand all day in the hot Southeast Asian sun peddling everything from newspapers and rags to single cigarettes...
...In July 1989, the World Bank approved a $300 million loan that required new Philippine legislation to reform the banking laws (among other things these laws were to give more regulatory powers to the Central Bank and eliminate certain secrecy provisions), and earlier this year the IMF and World Bank together urged the imposition of new taxes in exchange for a $1.3 billion loan this May...
...Rushmore with his own likeness...
...Mary's Court, Brookline, MA 02146 Telephone 617-277-9222 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1990 15 One reason the multilaterals kept doling out the money was that it gave them more leverage over policy...
...The 60/40 rule is one of the biggest barriers to development here," says Peter Wallace, president of AYC Consultants in Manila...
...Victor S. Limlengan of the Asian Institute of Management put it in a recent issue of the Philippines' Newsday, "While the right to vote is accepted as an inherent right, the right to do business is still considered a privilege subject to the government and its minions...
...The government for its part likes to point out that it waives the 60/40 rule in a number of sectors where there is no indigenous enterprise, but this only confirms the gist of the problem: foreign investment is allowed in, but not to the point where it might actually do something for the Filipino consumer by challenging a domestic monopoly...
...Unlike, say, China, where the authorities resorted to forced abortions because they believed them essential to economic progress, Ferdinand and Imelda embraced population control not so much because they really believed in it but because it opened a rich new vein of foreign aid...
...But waste and plunder explain only what occurred...
...Right now there are proposals in both congress and the cabinet to remove this restriction, but they run into constitutional difficulties...
...But the consequence is that you end up creating all sorts of government intermediaries that soak up a lot of money...
...That's a somewhat, well, diplomatic way of putting it...
...Gain Complete Control Over Your Scattered Notes, Memos, Clippings, Research Papers, And Letters...
...More directly, some of the money ended up in Marcos bank accounts...
...This program saved my neck when faced with teaching two new courses and only two months to prepare...
...Unfortunately, the Aquino administration has made only token improvements, largely because it has changed the players around without altering the rules of the game...
...This question of development policy has never been more urgent, coming as it does in the thick of negotiations on the future of the six U.S...
...Without doubt the sorry state of the Philippines today owes much to the ravages of Marcos and his cronies, who left this place with nothing to show for the billions in foreign aid but a $28.3 billion foreign debt, the highest debt level in Asia and one of the highest inthe world...
...Paper clutter makes you inefficient, frustrated, and can really hurt your career...
...The incoming administration of Corazon Aquino mothballed it in 1986, in the wake of charges that the plant's contract had been awarded on the basis of kickbacks to former President Ferdinand Marcos...
...A USAID officer once boasted to me that his people had Marcos banish a cabinet member, Placido Mapa, to the Philippine National Bank because they didn't believe he was enthusiastic enough about pushing for fewer Filipino babies...
...They were interested only in getting the money spent," says Sonny de los Reyes, a former Philippine government official who oversaw many projects...
...Squarenote is the easiest-tolearn, easiest-to-use software ever created for the PC...
...funding for supporting Peking's forced-abortion policy) to impose population control on an unwilling Philippine public...
...This project embodies the worst aspects of the Marcos regime," says Philippine Senator Rene Saguisag...
...Writers, Researchers...
...However wrong the authors may be in their belief that such practices somehow advanced international capitalism, they are dead on in their claims that the effect of all this economic centralization effectively made the World Bank and its lending colleagues Marcos accomplices...
...If the government eliminated it tomorrow, foreign investors would still find Filipino partners...
...Chamber of Commerce delegation weighed in with a report that it was "universally bullish" about the opportunities for fat contracts for American companies under MAI...
...The Aquino administration itself has evidently come around to Marcos's view that there really are too many Filipinos in the world today...
...Even on their own terms population programs are dubious: for all the millions spent on population control during the Marcos years—about $94.5 million—the birth rate dipped slightly but soon came up to its old levels...
...It's easier and less messy to lend to onegovernment rather than a number of private individuals...
...Nor do I put a price tag on Philippine honor and sovereignty...
...In the Philippines, for example, the bases have made the U.S...
...An inherently top-down approach, it deals with assistance the way HUD does with housing...
...wrote to President Reagan urging a $5-10 billion multinational aid initiative to shore up President Aquino's fledgling democracy...
...It runs on any PC...
...The smarter of them now recognize that because of the financial straits their own economic policies have put them in, they will be left with no choice but to agree to an extension of our leases—for a lot less money than they said they would...
...In the name of keeping out the dreaded multinational businesses she has only kept her country in thrall to the multilateral lending agencies...
...After going through the legislative mills in Washington, Tokyo (at $1 billion for 1990 Tokyo is the program's top contributor), and the capitals of the other participating nations, the plan was finally approved last summer...
...military facilities here, and amid a growing dissatisfaction (reflected in six coup attempts) that threatens Cory's ability to last out her term...
...In July 1988, then-NEDA chief Solita Monsod complained publicly that staffing and consulting requirements tied to American aid had cost the Filipino taxpayer some $2.7 millionjust to house and provide office space for aid workers that year...
...The one thing I've noticed about [the population control lobby] is that they have completely given up on man and his ability to meet problems," says Roque Carballo of Manila's Center for Research and Development...
...Marcos simply had large white fences constructed, lest foreign bureaucrats have to endure the unsightly spectacle of the impoverished Filipinos they were presumably there to help...
...In other words, the company enjoys all the profit but the Filipino taxpayer assumes all the risk, a costly arrangement given the drop in the value of the Philippine currency from seven pesos per dollar in 1983 to twenty-three pesos per dollar today...
...for upkeep of the bases...
...Then there are the hedging arrangements with a secret list of Philippine businesses—rumored to include even the giant San Miguel Brewing Company—whereby the government makes up any shortfall due to a drop in the exchange rate...
...government...
...You'll actually see the tops of your filing cabinets and desks, slim down your briefcase, and clean out your pockets...
...V et for all the concern that the new 1 MAI not repeat the failures of the past, it is striking that no one in the Philippines—not the National Economic Development Authority, the central bank, the congress, or even the cabinet—has any clear idea how much came in under Marcos, where it all went, and why...
...They would give out the money with little follow-up or accountability...
...It turns out that a birth-control pill called Noriday Brown, mixed with a gallon of water, makes an excellent fertilizer for orchids...
...Even well-intentioned programs did more for those on the contract end than those who were supposed to benefit from them, if only because aid is inherently stacked toward donor preferences rather than those of the recipients...
...Population control divides folks here like no other issue, a zero-sum summed up in an infamous 1977 address delivered at MIT by Robert McNamara in which the then-World Bank president said that although no one liked the idea of coercion, governments simply could not afford to "let population pressures grow so dangerously large...
...At one point during the negotiations, U.S...
...and Reps...
...Worst of all, you lose some of your best ideas, just when they would do the most good for your career...
...In the past there has been too much emphasis on doling out money," concedes the Philippine ambassador to the U.S., Emmanuel Pelaez...
...No American present could fail to be moved by the choir's gesture, another sign that in spite of all the nonsense spouted by Filipino elites America is still held in esteem at the grassroots—indeed greater esteem than their own government...
...On a more general level, at a time when Washington is restructuring its defenses to meet a changing world situation, it would do well to note that of the thirteen nations around the world that play host to American forces, the healthiest and most faithful allies—Germany, Japan, and South Korea—actually make contributions to the U.S...
...and Jack Kemp (R-N.Y...
...A government audit also complained about numerous safety flaws...
...bases are part of a U.S.-Philippine alliance that happens to provide this country with a free defense against external aggression...
...How else to explain Cory's recent approval of a brand-new, five billion peso (about $240 million) program to bring down the birth rate, not to mention the goal of Zero Population Growth by the year 2010 enshrined in the Medium Term Philippine Development Plan 19871992...
...To the multilaterals like the World Bank this was just part of the White Man's Burden, and in their secret reports they continue to argue that Real Development is but another billion dollars or a billion condoms away...
...Export-Import Bank, an agency of the U.S...
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...The difficult negotiations over the future of the six U.S...
...Instead of fighting, the ever-resourceful Filipinos have used the unwanted contraceptives to spawn a new industry: cut flowers...
...Not surprisingly, McNamara's brand of Imperial Nativism did not go over well in the Philippines...
...Bengzon, an old and ambitious anti-American leftie, happens to be vice chairman of the bases negotiating team...
...government the country's second largest employer (right behind the Philippine government...
...Preserve those precious ideas...
...Manglapus imagines...
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...But Filipinos left groaning under the multibillion-dollar debt with nothing to show for it might be inclined to point out how foreign lending actually increased as Marcos became more repressive...
...The only issue is the price at which the Philippines can be bought for what America is willing to pay...
...In the meantime scavengers have carted away whatever wasn't nailed down here, making it improbable that it will ever be cost-effective to start the plant even if it's given the green light...
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...Thus is completed the vicious aid circle, with the end result not gratitude but resentment...
...Thus began a concerted effort by USAID, the World Bank, and the U.N...
...In this they are loudly opposed by local organizations such as Families for Family, not to mention the Catholic bishops...
...WMcG THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1990 17...
...In the name of keeping out the dreaded multinational businesses Mrs...
...Aquino outlawed the booming mail-order marriage business here, characteristically making a public ruckus about a symptom while doing nothing about the underlying lack of economic opportunity that drives women to such acts of desperation, something no amount of aid can ever address...
...Indeed, in their secret reports the World Bank continues to plump for more government spending, a larger share of tax receipts vis-a-vis gross national product, and, of course, fewer Filipino babies (see "People Politics...
...rr he upshot is that while Cory continuess to jiggle enough fresh loans every few months to make the payments on the old ones, the promised economic revolution has not come...
...The first step was to restore constitutional democracy, which we have done...
...Bataan, the Philippines n the same peninsula where the Japanese forced American and Filipino prisoners of war through an infamous death march during World War II, the gray concrete dome of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant looks out onto the South China Sea from its bluff high above the water...
...In fact, Malacanang Palace has made it quite clear that the debate over the bases is not about the Philippines' defense, its foreign policy, or its place in the world...
...The bipartisan impetus for the MAI dates from 1987, when Senators Alan Cranston (D-Cal...
...Consequently, they inserted a constitutional clause giving the government the right to set population targets, moving what are properly personal decisions from the realm of private choice into public policy...
...Ambassador Richardson (whose name alone should set off alarm bells) returned from a trip to the Philippines this spring saying that Manila "is an attractive place to invest," and a U.S...
...But they'd feel that this place wanted them...
...and Richard Lugar (R-Ind...
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...Even more discouraging is to look at the continued dominance of the aid community in setting policy...
...Indeed, the answer to past abuses has been more of what got them in trouble in the first place: government...
...The tendency is to blame it all on the Marcoses' venality, reflected in Imelda's infamous shoe collection and the late president's commissioning of a Philippine Mt...
...That was the year Marcos imposed martial law, which not coincidentally led to an explosion in debt, reaching $28.3 billion by the time of his ouster...
Vol. 23 • September 1990 • No. 9
