EDSA 1 and the lead-up to it from 1983 were the seminal events in my adult life. I demonstrated them at much distress to my family, and it affected many of my relationships and friendships. We were so exhilarated then. Yet 40 years on, it is time to look impartially and unemotionally at its legacy. Why are the 40 years since EDSA a failure relative to our neighbors? To use the contemporaneous example, who is better off: the Filipino post-EDSA in 1986 or the Chinese post-Tienanmen in 1989? The answer is very painful, especially given that for most below 55, EDSA is history, not a memory.
One of the tragedies of EDSA is we concentrated on anti-corruption, important as that is but without sustained and structural success or with effective government and economic policy and planning. If one hires an honest but unqualified person to run a company, it will probably go bankrupt. Same if one hires a qualified but thoroughly corrupt person. You need both, and we have concentrated and with only sporadic success on anti-corruption, while having no industrial policy, poor delivery of government services and a dearth of long-term planning and execution. To quote Sen. George Aiken, “People cannot be starved into democracy, they can be starved into dictatorships.”
All we did was just return to the pre-1972 system with minor changes, but that was already failing by 1972. If it wasn’t, would the people have largely welcomed martial law in 1972? And why was there a Constitutional Convention elected in 1971 if we were so happy with the system we had then? Before 1972, we were already lagging. Please stop with the false nostalgia on that, too.
Amid the euphoria and hope from EDSA 1, the elements were there that sadly led to our decadeslong underperformance relative to our neighbors. Then add the legacy of the martial law era. For my generation, that dual blow is so painful to realize and admit.
Revulsion for what came before led to anything associated with the first Marcos regime being bad. For example, the Department of Energy was abolished. Only to be revived toward the end of the first Aquino administration when we had 12-hour brownouts. The Bataan Nuclear Plant was shelved, but the debt associated with it was honored and no replacement was made for the generating capacity that was to come from it. Was there clear corruption and overpricing of the plant? Yes. That is why some who were associated with it fled the country and never returned. Was there any critical thinking on what shelving it meant and what had to be done to replace it besides feeling good and morally superior? No. We are still living off that legacy with expensive power. Also, albeit from a much lower demand base, about 40 percent of power was renewable at the time, and most of the geothermal and hydroelectric plants from the first Marcos era still serve as baseload power plants today. This lead was not built on. No critical thinking, no hard analysis, just rejection of what came before.
Which leads to another post-EDSA 1 trait. The politicization of everything in government where if the new administration was against the prior, years were wasted on investigations of programs that mostly led to nothing except delay, cosmetic changes and new players taking over with the pattern repeated after the next change.
Then the lack of replacements for what was removed or reversed. The sugar and coconut monopolies were seen as rent-seeking of the highest order and expansion into value-added downstream products was theory not reality. By comparison, look at what Thailand did with their sugar industry and Malaysia with rubber and palm oil. We removed the monopolies which led to short-term gains for the planters, but stopped there. There was no industrial or agricultural policy pre- or post-EDSA to put what was needed to grow or even maintain production of sugar and rice, and scale and cost effectively with output growing. Or developing value-added downstream products as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia did. No co-ops were put in place post-land reform as Thailand and Vietnam did or if they were incapable of that, other measures like corporate farming to keep them productive and up to date to make farming a profession worth staying in. At least things are better with coconut, but given our aging and less productive trees with seven to eight years lead time between planting and being productive, and support needed to have effective and comprehensive replanting with compensation for that period, we better move and not just rely on market forces. At least this administration is pushing comprehensive replanting.
Same with agrarian reform and rice production which has been a long-running problem. The last time we were self-sufficient in rice was 30 years ago, during the Ramos administration. I asked a Cabinet official during that administration why we have not been able to keep up. Among other things was his pithy reply — “we were 60 million people then.” Has agricultural productivity kept pace with population growth? Another problem from EDSA 1 was what became the veto power the Catholic Church had over social policies they were against like birth control and divorce. I thought there was separation of Church and State?
“Leave it to the private sector” and “the Washington Consensus” were followed, and our believing that with blind faith and fervor, and without critical thinking or analysis of what international overlords with their own agenda dictated was best for us. No planning, no industrial policy and just leave it to market forces. No surprise our conglomerates exited manufacturing given the profit margins and dominance in real estate and services? Even in newer industries like business process outsourcing, the biggest ones are all foreign-owned unlike India. Our meager industries and our manufacturing base then largely disappeared, and factories turned into warehouses and cold storage facilities, and our workers to overseas Filipino workers with all their social costs.
Did we get an effective government 40 years ago and since? Occasionally but mostly mediocre governance or worse. It is fine and even overdue to properly and objectively analyze the legacies of 1972 and 1986, but not to stay stuck in it. It has been over 50 or 40 years since both happened. Can we finally stop being reactionary and look forward instead? Otherwise, in our case, Senator Aiken may be proven right.
The author is an independent director of the state-run Maharlika Investment Corp.
