Tuesday, November 27, 2007 Speak out: No surprise By Magdalena mendoza Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore
FEW Filipinos were surprised by the granting of pardon of former president Joseph Estrada, just a month after he was convicted for plunder charges.
The reaction to the executive pardon given to Estrada has thus far been mixed, with most negative reaction coming from certain sections of the Filipino elite. For the masses, however, the pardon seemed to be a welcome move.
However, for many other ordinary Filipinos who are not necessarily fond of Estrada, the pardon was greeted with either indifference or relief.
For one thing, President Arroyo’s action is only the latest example of a long tradition of lenient treatment by Filipino leaders alleged of wrongdoing by their predecessors that goes back to the end of World War II when top officials convicted of collaborating with the Japanese invaders were granted a general amnesty.
Gen. Douglas McArthur, the wartime chief of US forces in the Philippines, personally exonerated Manuel Roxas who served in the Japanese puppet cabinet but became the first post-independence president of the republic in 1946.
Political intramurals
Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator who fled the country in February 1986, was also spared prosecution for alleged massive corruption and human rights violations because another former president, Corazon Aquino and other government leaders refused to have him return for fear of political destabilization.
Yet, as much as ordinary Filipinos have become accustomed to such politically-charged pardons and other political intramurals between the ruling elites, they also seem to have turned weary of the contests that have long characterized the country’s political landscape and which have helped perpetuate instability. For them, the payoff from such pardons and their associated restraint from indulging yet again in street-power exuberance, is political stability and economic growth — two things that had long eluded the Philippines, although enjoyed abundantly by neighbors in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and even lately, Indonesia.
Indeed, that most ordinary Filipinos do not seem to have been particularly bothered by the pardon is most probably because they see the decision as one that opens the door to national healing and prospects of longer-term stability even at the expense of a dent in the country’s anti-corruption and the rule of law agenda.
Political contests are normal in a democratic society but the instability that could arise from too much politics can be abated if there were bureaucratic autonomy and stability.
Limping economy
Half a century ago, the Philippines was considered one of Asia’s most promising economies given its strategic location in the heart of Southeast Asia, its rich natural resources, and its highly educated and English-speaking middle class. Such promise came to naught as the country vacillated between authoritarianism and unsuccessful “developmentalism,” characterized by the much-written about “crony-capitalism.”
The economy limped on, like a sick man, even as parts of the sub-region registered unprecedented socio-economic gains. It is only in recent years, and in no small measure because of prevailing political stability that has allowed President Arroyo to embark on a much more focused chapter of economic “developmentalism,” that the economy went into high gear despite both natural and man-made calamities. For example, the economy has achieved a very respectable growth rate of over seven percent in the first half of 2007, up from 5.5 percent in 2006.
Although the sustainability of such performance is still unclear, for once, in a long time, many ordinary Filipinos have began appreciating how political stability can be the lifeblood needed for state agents to steer the economy to play catch-up with its neighbors.
Political stability was at the heart of majority of Asia’s most successful economies—a stability that allowed for, among other things, the nurturing of a technocratic bureaucratic ethos, absent in many developing countries.
In these polities, elite technocratic managers who were autonomous and generally insulated from political pressures characterized the economic bureaucracy—something that has generally been absent in the Philippines.
Noted political scientist Chalmers Johnson of the University of California notes that a pre-requisite for political leaders attempting to implement long-term development policies is the capacity to depoliticize key economic decisions.
He and others studied how the more successful countries in East Asia have achieved this by entrusting such decisions to a “non-political elite,” sheltered to some degree from direct political pressures and which was able to justify its decisions in terms of the greater public good.
In the classic “developmental” states, such politicization has long been achieved through the deliberate separation between those who reign and those who rule. The former are politicians who set broad goals, protect the technocratic bureaucracy from political pressures, perform the “safety valve” functions when the bureaucracy makes mistakes, and take the heat when corruption scandals are uncovered. The latter, comprise of the key technocrats in the bureaucracy, are responsible for the actual planning of the policies that guide the economy.
Countries such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore seem to have achieved a balance of bureaucratic expertise and independence, which enabled them to maintain predictable public policy environments. The key here is the political stability that underlined all of this. Many Filipinos are longing for this kind of stability.
