Commentary
Obvious Truths and Blatant Lies about Cha-Cha
To
argue that Charter change (Cha-cha) would make government more responsive
to the people’s needs is a blatant lie. Cha-cha actually sets the stage
for more attacks on the general well-being of the people in three ways.
BY
ANTONIO TUJAN, JR.
IBON
Features
Posted by Bulatlat
It seems that the room for Malacañang to
maneuver its Charter-change (Cha-cha) campaign is getting narrower by the
day. Presidential chief of staff Michael Defensor short of admitted that
Malacañang has already given up on the constituent assembly (con-ass)
route to Cha-cha after he claimed that the Sigaw ng Bayan initiative may
overtake moves to convene Congress into a con-ass. Former president Fidel
Ramos is also now reportedly supporting the supposed people’s initiative,
apparently an effort to drum up and gather support for Sigaw ng Bayan
which is hell-bent to submit its petition backed purportedly by 10 million
signatures before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) next week.
Malacañang’s desperation to ram its
version of a people’s initiative in spite of obvious legal questions and
widespread public opposition (including from the Church and business) to
the ongoing Cha-cha process has intensified after talks between the House
of Representatives and the Senate on the issue of con-ass failed as
expected. The latter actually tried to reach a compromise with the
proposal of Sen. Richard Gordon, who chairs the Senate’s constitutional
amendments committee, to deal with economic reforms first. But apparently
such offer does not serve the political agenda of President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo, the patron of pro-Cha-cha House members and main
beneficiary of current Cha-cha efforts.
More attacks on the people
Indeed, the obvious truth is that Cha-cha
is neither about lofty development goals nor improving the people’s lot.
Ask a man on the street and he or she would say that Cha-cha is all about
the narrow political agenda of President Arroyo and her party Lakas, which
dominates the House. Seven out of 10 Filipinos who are aware of Cha-cha
think so based on a nationwide survey conducted by IBON Foundation, Inc.
last March.
To argue that Cha-cha would make
government more responsive to the people’s needs is a blatant lie. Cha-cha
actually sets the stage for more attacks on the general well-being of the
people in three ways.
First, it intensifies foreign direct
investment (FDI) liberalization that in the long run destroys more jobs
than it could create. Second, it takes away even the lip service that the
1987 Constitution gives to the promotion of economic sovereignty and
public good and welfare. And third, it perpetuates an illegitimate regime
that has long ceased to represent the ideals of Edsa Dos (people’s
uprising in 2001), much less the people’s general interest, as seen from
its track record of anti-poor economic policies.
False formula
Yet members of Arroyo’s Consultative
Commission on Charter Change (Concom) continue to peddle the deception
that Cha-cha can solve widespread unemployment and chronic poverty in the
country. In an article, for instance, Concom member Gonzalo Jurado
criticized IBON for saying that the people will not gain anything from
Cha-cha. According to Jurado, the IBON statement is incorrect because
Cha-cha is actually about creating jobs and reducing poverty.
Jurado’s underlying premise, which is a
recurring theme in all past Cha-cha efforts, is that the globalization of
the 1987 Constitution through Cha-cha would create favorable economic
opportunities for Filipinos and his simplistic formula is that FDI
liberalization is equal to national development.
However, such formula has long been proven
false. From 1991 to 2004, 93% of the 2,156 changes in FDI policies
worldwide were for various degrees of liberalization. Consequently, the
average annual FDI inflow (factoring inflation) to poor countries
increased from $71.7 billion in 1980-1989 to $379.1 billion in 1990-2004,
or a 429% growth in FDI inflow. But between 1990 and 2001, the proportion
of people below the international poverty line in poor countries only
slightly improved from 27.9% to 23.1% while in Africa, poverty incidence
even worsened from 44.6% to 46.4 percent. Meanwhile, global unemployment
rate deteriorated from 5.6% in 1993 to 6.2% in 2003 with global
employment-to-population ratio (i.e. the share of employed workers with
the working age population) declining from 63.3% to 62.5% during the same
period.
One of the countries that changed its FDI
policies in favor of liberalization was the Philippines through various
laws like the Foreign Investment Act of 1991. The liberalization frenzy of
the 1990s brought in FDI that is even much larger than the total FDI that
flowed in the country in the previous decades, with one estimate showing
that two-thirds of accumulated FDI since 1968 came in the second half of
the 1990s. From 1995 to 2005, cumulative FDI in the Philippines reached
$12.37 billion. During the same period, around 629,813 workers became
jobless due to various economic reasons while the number of poor Filipinos
(based on official poverty statistics) increased by over four million
between 1985 and 2000.
Private capital for private profits
What happened? The obvious truth is that
at its core, FDI is simply private capital that aims to produce private
profits– it has no noble humanitarian goals whatsoever and whatever
development gain is only peripheral to profits realized. If left
unregulated, it could be very vicious in its quest for profits as it
drains host economies of its resources and destroys local industries and
productive forces.
FDI per se is not bad– in theory, foreign
capital can be a factor in economic growth if the attraction of FDI is
designed to meet certain economic requirements. But in the Philippines as
in most countries, what is happening is its complete reverse because the
economy is being designed to meet the specifications of FDI.
As such, FDI promotion has also meant
compromising even the most basic human rights of the people. A case in
point: To attract P1 ($0.02, based on an exchange rate of P53.26 per US
dollar) of FDI, the Arroyo regime is waiving P5 ($0.09) in potential
revenues, even as it only spends P0.14 ($0.0026) for health and P1.50
($0.03) for education out of every P10 ($0.19) it spends.
Aside from generous fiscal incentives that
drain public coffers of resources, workers’ rights and welfare are also
sacrificed to entice FDI. Wages are kept artificially low. Since 2001, the
nominal minimum wage in the country has increased by only 16% while the
daily cost of living has jumped by 29 percent. The present average minimum
wage in the different regions could only fulfill 36% of the cost of
living.
Proponents of Cha-cha aim to globalize the
constitution not only through FDI liberalization but through systematic
abrogation of various State responsibilities and duties and strengthening
of private (and foreign) business by creating a policy environment more
conducive to privatization and deregulation.
A random review of the Concom proposals
reveals that several important provisions of the constitution that clearly
identified the role of the State in ensuring that the people live decently
by ensuring just wages, gainful employment, accessible social services,
genuine agrarian reform and others have been entirely deleted. For the
Concom, it is simply “editing” the “excessive detail” and “motherhood
statements” of the charter. But in the context of globalization, it is
undoubtedly a deliberate effort to legitimize and expand the ongoing
privatization and deregulation of public utilities, schools, hospitals and
others.
Single biggest reason
Behind the packaging of Cha-cha as a
wonder drug that would cure the country’s political and economic ills is
the glaring reality that the current Cha-cha drive is simply a way out of
the Arroyo regime’s political quagmire. Through Cha-cha, Arroyo attempts
to weaken the opposition by drawing in various sectors of the elite who
stand to gain from Cha-cha as well as consolidate and expand her support
from pro-globalization comprador and foreign interests who have
been awaiting the Cha-cha to institute the additional neoliberal reforms
they are demanding.
The current Cha-cha drive is being pushed
by the Arroyo faction to increase the concentration of political and
economic power in the hands of a few. This is the single biggest reason
why the people should resist all efforts to change the 1987 Constitution
now.
The political and economic problems of the
country are not the result of a defective constitution but of structural
flaws inherent in a social system that is under the control of elite and
foreign interests. Cha-cha can only be an instrument for genuine political
and economic reforms if it is the result of a changing balance of power in
favor of the oppressed and dominated. This means that the process of
changing the constitution must be a process resulting from the people’s
struggles. Bulatlat
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