DEMOCRACY MEANS DEVELOPMENT
At a World Economic Forum (WEF) discussion in Cambodia’s capital city
on Wednesday, the organization’s first regional meeting in the country, a group
of experts shared their dreams for the bloc and human rights emerged as a
common denominator.
“Development can only be sustained when people are secure,” said Wai
Wai Nu, a former political prisoner under Myanmar’s military government who is
now founder and director of Women Peace Network. “My dream is for ASEAN is to
become an inclusive society where all people in the region can enjoy freedom
with respect to their human rights.”
One of the goals for William Tanuwijaya, co-founder and CEO of
Indonesian e-commerce giant Tokopedia is for politicians to run a clean
government and inspire new generations to serve their citizens.
Meanwhile, AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes urged leaders to be open to
criticism. “It’s no secret that a freer a country is, the more creative it is.”
Formed in August 1967, ASEAN promotes intergovernmental cooperation
amongst its 10 members: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar and Vietnam.
As the bloc turns 50 this year, several members continue to enforce
laws restricting freedom of expressions and the right to peaceful assembly.
Such repressive policies have drawn stinging criticism from international
non-profit groups who say the bloc must take human dignity as seriously as
economic growth – ASEAN is expected to grow 5.1 percent annually through
2017-2021 and become the world’s fifth-largest economy by 2020, the OECD
estimates.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/news/asean-turns-50-focus-turns-151423315.html
—Nyshka Chandran, “As ASEAN turns 50, focus turns to region's shaky civil liberties plight,” CNBC, May 10, 2017
Any social scientist worth his salt knows that strong democracies
perform better economically, so that a proven path to economic development is
to build and strengthen democracy. The authoritarian path to development is the
exception—we can cite less than a handful of countries, probably we would
include Spain, Communist China, or Singapore, for example. In the rest of East
Asia, authoritarianism has been a transitional stage to democracy and
development. However, the East Asian model is the exception to the rule. The
rule is that in the developing world, authoritarianism leads to massive
corruption and catastrophic development outcomes. True of the Philippines in
the past, no different today. The Philippines is not part of East Asia. The
Philippines is not a Spain, Communist China, or Singapore, and it will never
be. It is not part of Western Europe like Spain, it is not a very large country
like Communist China, and it is not a city-state like Singapore. Under Duterte’s
dictatorial type rule, it has been getting worse economically, and you can be
sure it will get even worse. Duterte rules in a violent, dictatorial manner
that subverts the rule of law and incites massive corruption. He does not hold
in his hand the formula for economic development.
“President Rodrigo Duterte’s death squads didn’t kill corruption in the
Philippines last year. But they killed freedom and democracy, and will kill the
country’s economic growth and equity market.”
—Panos Mourdoukoutas, “Duterte's Philippines Is Getting More Corrupt,” Forbes, January 26, 2017
Forbes is telling us what social scientists have known for some time
now. Killing democracy and destroying political freedoms in a developing
country like the Philippines is a formula for economic underdevelopment,
possibly leading to economic disaster. The Philippines is at risk of becoming
another Venezuela under Duterte, a dimwitted leader with the brain of Maduro
and with intransigence similar to that of the bus driver’s made multiple times
more dangerous by habitual mass murder and all the worst vices that go along
with the egregious abuse of power.
Duterte the massively corrupt dictator will destroy the Philippines
economically. Do not give him your political support.
Public domain image
ReplyDeleteImage link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scatterplot_r%3D.47.png
Gonzalinho
PHILIPPINES SUFFERS WORST DECLINE IN COMPETITIVENESS RANKING
ReplyDeleteRichmond Mercurio (The Philippine Star) - May 24, 2018 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines posted its largest year-on-year decline in economic competitiveness in the past decade as it dropped nine notches to 50th spot in this year’s World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) rankings of the International Institute of Management Development.
The Philippines fell to the 50th spot out of 63 economies in the 2018 WCY rankings from last year’s 41st position, with the country slipping in all four broad categories of the report – economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure.
The nine-notch drop is the country’s worst in the past 10 years, exceeding a four-notch decline recorded in 2014 (42nd) from 2013 (38th).
The 2018 WCY ranked 63 economies based on 258 indicators.
…Among 14 Asia-Pacific economies, the Philippines saw its position slip to 13th this year from 11th last year.
“The Philippines experiences the most significant drop in the region (Southeast Asia), shifting nine places to 50th. The reasons for such a drop include a decline in tourism and employment, the worsening of public finances and a surge in concerns about the education system. Investing in quality infrastructure and strengthening investment in human capital are the key challenges for the Philippines,” the report said.
The country’s rank in the economic performance category plunged to 50th globally in 2018 from 2017’s 26th.
The Philippines also saw its global rank in terms of government efficiency category nosedive to 44th this year from 37th last year.
Rankings in the business efficiency category and infrastructure category also plummeted by 10 and six notches, respectively.
Link: https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/05/24/1818128/philippines-suffers-worst-decline-competitiveness-ranking#z6jkG5FsAR8Iszzj.99
Reason for our dramatic decline is BAD GOVERNANCE. Our dictatorial president Duterte insists on implementing the FAILED authoritarian governance model of the Marcos regime, and the deleterious effects are showing. So-called Philippine prosperity is FAKE, fueled by gargantuan debt from Communist China.
Why do we have to undergo a major economic crisis to begin to arrest our slide into atrociously bad governance, abusive dictatorship, and massive corruption? The Philippine people, many ignorant of history, have allowed this repetition of our degenerate national experience.
Gonzalinho
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/05/24/1818128/philippines-suffers-worst-decline-competitiveness-ranking#z6jkG5FsAR8Iszzj.99
Delete—Richmond Mercurio, “Philippines suffers worst decline in competitiveness ranking,” The Philippine Star (May 24, 2018)
Gonzalinho
DEMOCRATIZING THE ECONOMY
ReplyDeleteBy: Cielito F. Habito - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:13 AM July 18, 2023
The Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Company used to have a monopoly on telephone services, and Philippine Airlines (PAL) on domestic airline services in the country. It took over six years from when my wife filed an application for our telephone line in early 1984, to the time we finally got it in 1990. It would have taken more had I not been a senior official at the National Economic and Development Authority by then. Having met a PLDT executive in a meeting, I mentioned to him our long-standing application. Lo and behold, we had our phone line in two days! Over six long years, they had given various excuses why it still wasn’t possible to get our connection. But it was, all along.
Former president Fidel V. Ramos moved to open up those erstwhile monopolies to competition early in his presidency in the 1990s. …when Ramos took office in 1992, the economy was anything but democratic, especially due to legally sanctioned monopolies controlling key economic sectors, with telecommunications and domestic civil aviation being prominent. The result had been higher prices and/or inadequate services, with ordinary consumers getting the proverbial short end of the stick. It thus fell on Ramos to extend democratization to the economic sphere, a task he took to heart.
Democratization was all about letting the small people have a voice, small businesses face a level playing field with the big players, and ordinary consumers enjoy wider choices and lower prices. Our mantra then was “broad-based growth and development”—the precursor to the term “inclusive growth and development” that World Bank president James Wolfensohn was to popularize later.
…Democratization was also about enabling small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which hinged on faithful implementation of the Magna Carta for SMEs (Republic Act No. 6977) enacted under the Cory Aquino administration. A particular constraint had always been access to financing and improved technologies for our small farms and firms.
…in 1995, Ramos issued EO 219 which opened up the airline industry. Thus ended the telephone and airline monopolies, and the rest is history.
I pointed out then how opening up to competition unleashed such rapid growth in their markets, that PLDT’s and PAL’s respective slices of their now-divided market “bibingkas” ended up even bigger than the entire bibingkas they used to monopolize. In the end, democratization had a win-win outcome, for industry players and consumers alike.
cielito.habito@gmail.com
Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/164842/democratizing-the-economy#ixzz88YaXJ8Uo
Democratization advances development in at least some critical and illustrative cases.
Gonzalinho