In previous posts, the nature of politics in the Philippines has been explored from many angles. We’ve examined the history of a weak state, how local politicians have difficulty making a national impact, and trials and techniques of Philippine presidents in the face of this situation. The Philippines does not have political parties that can formulate and enact policy options, and a political system of separation of powers (where Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court all check each other) can be a recipe for paralysis (as the American polity is currently discovering).
All this has been about continuity – the saying that “in the Philippines things are never as good as you hope or as bad as you fear” has been around for decades. But what about change? Experience over these decades has been that things can and do change. How does a country denigrated by Lee Kuan Yew for having “98 percent of the population waiting for a telephone, and the other 2 percent for a dial tone” become the “texting” capital of the world with the majority of citizens now owning a mobile phone? How can a country which for decades had a dominant air carrier with inadequate service achieve the greatest global penetration of low-cost carriers? How did an archipelago of 7,107 islands achieve economies in inter-island transport that lowered the cost of shipping goods and increased possibilities of tourism?
As a contribution to improving the effectiveness of overseas development assistance, we have analyzed some success stories at length. Here we can focus on the politics of how reforms can happen, with an effort to increase the availability of secure titles to land for urban residents. The process began with a clear idea of what needs to be accomplished – turning the 12 million untitled parcels of land (“dead capital”) into secure property of owners. As a problem in economic development, “dead capital” has been well-discussed, particularly since the publication of Hernando de Soto’s book, The Miracle of Capital. A loose network of individuals interested in reform – ideologues, government officials, academics – began with the aim of unleashing dead capital.
To do this, new administrative procedures would be necessary in order to increase the number of titles being issued (an average of 4,000 per year) – and since the land was public, titles could be issued by the government free of charge if recipients could prove they had paid taxes on it. To lessen political complications, it was decided to limit coverage to urban residential land to avoid continually contentious issues around rural agrarian reform. Urban parcels comprise some 70 percent of those untitled and could comprise valuable sources of security and capital for those residing on them.
The small group of reformers identified potential allies. In the private sector, the team zeroed in on the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines and the Chamber of Thrift Banks as the private stakeholders who had the most interest in pursuing reform, because the dearth of titled properties constrained collateral-based lending to homeowners and businessmen. In the House of Representatives, Representative Cerilles was the central actor. He used his influence as assistant majority floor leader to get the bill heard in his committee, the Committee on Land Use, instead of the Committee on Natural Resources, where it had been languishing. The Senate took a more deliberative approach, but passed the bill on Oct. 12, 2009, and President Arroyo signed the bill on March 9, 2010.
In 2011, the first full year of implementation, more than 58,000 titles were issued, a 14-fold increase over the previous pace. But in the face of more than 8 million untitled urban parcels, drastic speed-up was needed. The coalition developed a “force multiplier” strategy to harness the 1,600 cities and municipalities who have resources and could draw the interest of local politicians. For elected officials this is practically a “no-brainer” – it was easy to imagine ceremonies where Mayors hand titles over to constituents. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) issued an administrative order to provide a legal basis to work with local governments on land administration and titling. Reformers set out to brief local governments on the interests and practicalities of these “Residential Free Patents” and 78 have established “land offices” to drive titling beyond the current capacity of DENR.
So, this case (which is not the only one) is about reformers who search among the various elements of the elite – government bureaucrats, elected officials, private sector, and civil society – to find allies who either agree with their goals or whose interests can be aligned with the reform effort. In this fashion, a technically sound and politically feasible reform can be passed. Cynics may wonder, though, that beyond improving the lives of tens of thousands of families (a worthy goal in itself, of course), has anything fundamentally changed? But it should be obvious that telecommunications reform not only brought cellphones to the average citizen, but opened up an entire industry of business process outsourcing (where the Philippines is now number two in the world).
What of Residential Free Patent? In their recent book, Why Nations Fail, Acemoglu and Robinson argue that nations thrive when they develop “inclusive” political and economic institutions, including secure property rights. Urban citizens who own property are more likely to demand efficient city services, courts that can adjudicate property rights, and a better future for their children. They will be less dependent on the whims of powerful people than when they could be evicted as “informal settlers.” By increasing the autonomy of the average citizen, fundamental change is afoot.
Editor’s note: this version has been edited slightly from the original.
This is the fourteenth posting in the series, “A Representative Professor,” a weekly series during a teaching sabbatical at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Jaime Faustino manages The Asia Foundation’s Economic Reform and Development Program in the Philippines and Steven Rood is the Foundation’s country representative in the Philippines. They can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected], respectively. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual authors and not those of The Asia Foundation.
It is always exciting to be able to take a break from program implementation to think more deeply about the theories that underlie development practice on the ground. That is of course the whole point of a teaching sabbatical, and it is what we both enjoyed about the “Experts’ Roundtable on Local-Level Justice in Conflict-Affected and Fragile Regions” hosted by The Asia Foundation in San Francisco last week.
The roundtable sought to better link development theory and research in order to influence law and justice policy and practice on the ground. The legal empowerment theory that we in The Asia Foundation’s Philippines office have been following is both a goal and a process whose implementation is a bit challenging, but nonetheless, appealing to most development practitioners because of its bottom-up approach, beginning with the people. Legal empowerment for the poor has been touted as a pathway out of poverty, but what empirical basis do we have to support this assertion? In the Philippines, civil society engagement, working with community organizations, has resulted in the passage of national laws affecting the marginalized sectors in society (laws such as Urban and Development Housing Act, Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, Comprehensive Juvenile Justice System, Magna Carta for Women, among others), but questions remain about the implementation. Are marginalized communities any better off because of these laws? Children who have committed crimes may not be better off outside of prisons; this may have unintentionally made them the target of extra-legal killings. Farmers are economically better off today owning the land they till than when they didn’t but even so, rapid economic improvement has not been achieved. (more…)
As the leader of the world’s largest development NGO, Founder and Chair of BRAC Sir Fazle Hasan Abed’s Fellowship entailed meetings with senior officials in the international development field, as well as presentations at prestigious institutions in Washington, D.C. and the San Francisco Bay Area. Sir Fazle’s remarks focused on issues of poverty alleviation, education, and food security.
The Asia Foundation Chang-Lin Tien Fellows Program was established to foster exchanges for leaders to meet and interact with their counterparts in Asia and the U.S. The fellowship honors the late Dr. Chang-Lin Tien, former Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, for his many accomplishments in science, higher education, and community affairs. It was created to highlight Dr. Tien’s assuming the chairmanship of The Asia Foundation Board of Trustees in 1999.
Tomorrow is World Water Day. Tragically, by the end of the day, 4,300 children somewhere in the world will have died because of contaminated water and poor sanitation. That’s one child every 20 seconds. This is an appalling statistic, but still represents a marked improvement from 12 years ago when a child died every eight seconds. The United Nations (UN) announced earlier this month that the world had reached the Millennium Development Goal target of halving the number of people without access to clean drinking water, five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. That’s good news, but it’s not the whole story.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 783 million people, about one for every 10 on the planet, have no access to safe drinking water, and 2.5 billion people – more than a third of humanity – still lack proper sanitation. The problem is particularly acute in Asia, where more than half of the 2.5 billion people without improved sanitation live. On the positive side, of the almost 2 billion people who have gained access to safe drinking water in the past decade, 47 percent live in China and India; testament to both nations’ economic growth and improved standard of living.
Agriculture consumes a massive 71 percent of global freshwater use. Many Asian farmers are accustomed to free or cheap water. This has led to a system of wasteful consumption throughout the region. However, Asian governments are reluctant to raise water prices because they either are wary of angering people who have grown used to having cheap access to this precious resource, or want to continue to provide access to the poorest of the poor who otherwise could not afford it. In many cases, governments are not able to effectively regulate water. Many farmers in India and Pakistan, for example, can readily tap into groundwater, often illegally, further depleting groundwater resources and access to water for others. (more…)
Given that I’ve written that kinship is the idiom of social organization in the Philippines, it’s probably not surprising that when asked for one book to read about the Philippines I often recommend An Anarchy of Families: State and Society in the Philippines, edited by Alfred W. McCoy. Not only is it a classic from the early 1990s, but you can get the essential point of the book by merely perusing the title.
While using it as a textbook in the class that I’m teaching at SAIS, it occurred to me that updating the situation of the families treated would be a handy way of looking at two decades of Philippine political history. A couple of the stories would obviously be too complex to tell – say the prominent Lopez business family or the multi-pronged Osmena political family from Cebu. For the sake of brevity, I’ll just focus on three examples from the book that illustrate how people often called “warlords” mobilize guns, goons, and gold. In fact, McCoy himself compares Ramon Durano of Danao, Cebu, Ali Dimaporo of Lanao, and Justiniano Montano of Cavite – hypothesizing that warlords need sustainable financial resources for longevity, which the Duranos seem to have done more successfully than the other two families. (more…)
by Athena Lydia Casambre and Steven Rood | March 7, 2012 | Blog
The Philippines has been noted as having one of the smallest gender disparities in the world. The gender gap has been closed in both health and education; the country has had two female presidents (Corazon Aquino from 1986-1992 and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from 2001-2010); and had its first woman Supreme Court justice (Cecilia Muñoz Palma in 1973) before the United States had one (Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981). These achievements reflect a long history of efforts by women to involve themselves equally in governance as well as in society.
The Philippines has been noted as having one of the smallest gender disparities in the world. Photo by Karl Grobl.
The struggle for women’s right to vote was the site for early feminism in the Philippines. It spanned three decades, culminating in September 1937 with the ratification by the Commonwealth government National Assembly after a plebiscite vote by women voters on April 30, 1937. With 447,725 “Yes” votes, a number well above the 300,000 quota stipulated by the 1935 Constitution, finally “the Filipina got the vote.”
Writer, feminist activist, and beauty queen Pura Villanueva Kalaw wrote and published a pamphlet in 1952 called: “How the Filipina Got the Vote,” summarizing three decades of organization and legislative lobbying by women’s groups, with the support – paradoxically – of men in positions of power. (more…)
Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art at the British Museum Mr. Richard Blurton’s research at the Asian Art Museum focused on the visual representations of narrative traditions in Indian and Southeast Asian art in the Museum’s significant collection. He examined the depictions of religious and narrative concepts in the paintings, textiles and sculptures housed in both AAM and the British Museum.
Asia Foundation Trustee Judith Wilbur generously established a fellowship in Asian Art in honor of her late husband and former Trustee, Brayton Wilbur, Jr. The fellowship stems from the Wilburs’ deep interest in Asian art, nurtured through their residence and travel in the region, and their commitment to the work of The Asia Foundation and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (AAM). The two institutions are collaborating in the program’s execution, with AAM identifying qualified fellowship recipients, and The Asia Foundation’s Asian American Exchange unit responsible for overall administration.
Religion is once again in the headlines about the Philippines as 600,000 members of the home-grown Iglesia ni Cristo (INC – Church of Christ) held a prayer rally in Manila yesterday. Meanwhile, Catholics cheered the Vatican’s formal announcement last week that the second Roman Catholic Saint from the Philippines, Pedro Calungsod (soon to be known as San Pedro de Cebu) would be formally canonized on Oct. 21, 2012.
The annual procession of the “Black Nazarene” attracts hundreds of thousands of devotees over a 6.3 kilometer route through the streets of Manila. Photo by flickr user incrediblethots.
As has been the case since Spanish colonial times, religion and politics are inextricably linked in the Philippines. Although no politicians were allowed to speak at the INC rally, it was widely perceived to be in support of embattled Chief Justice Renato Corona, whose chief defense council in his Senate Impeachment Trial, Serafin Cuevas, is a prominent member of the INC. The event is in line with the long tradition of politicians of all stripes courting the support of the INC, whose members are instructed to vote as a bloc for whoever is designated by their leaders (currently headed by Eduardo V. Manalo, grandson of founder Felix Manalo).
Roman Catholic involvement in politics is equally well-known, with the most famous example being Cardinal Jaime Sin calling on Filipinos to go out in 1986 to join military rebels at Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) at the beginning of the People Power Revolution that ousted the authoritarian President Ferdinand Marcos. An interesting symbolic representation of the intertwining is that the 1995 visit by Pope John Paul II was in fact commemorated by an overprint on Philippine currency. (As was the canonization of the first Philippine saint in 1987, San Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila.)
As is the case in other parts of the world, there are increasingly more evangelical charismatic Christian organizations being established – which in the Philippines, naturally have political connections. Within the Catholic Church, there is El Shaddai, headed by Mike Velarde whose son Rene is a member of congress for the Buhay (“life”) Party List. On the Protestant side, there is Jesus is Lord (JIL) headed by Eddie Villanueva whose son Joel in turn served the maximum three terms as party list congressman and was appointed by the Aquino administration to head the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). “Bro. Eddie” himself has run repeatedly for president, though his vote percentage totals are always in the single digits.
Given its reputation as a devout Christian nation (and willingness to put Roman Catholic symbols in the currency), some may find it surprising that the Philippine government has been reaching out to Muslims, having recently instituted two official Muslim holidays: Eid’l Fitre and Eid’l Adha. Meanwhile, in the 2010 presidential elections, Muslim organizations endorsed a conservative Protestant, saying that, “Bro. Eddie Villanueva, being a man of God, can bring the much-needed moral fiber in our decadent society and government.”
Religion in politics is often overshadowed by some of the more spectacular exhibitions that catch the attention of the global media – such as the penitents who are whipped or even nailed to the cross every Holy Week as re-enactments of the passion of Jesus Christ as related in the Bible. Or the annual procession of the “Black Nazarene” (a statue of Christ carrying the cross) through the streets of Manila that attracts hundreds of thousands of devotees over a 6.3 kilometer route (that took 22 hours to cover in January 2012). Less spectacular, but no less striking, even to Catholic foreigners, is the widespread devotion to the child Jesus (Santo Niño).
Such practices can be seen as manifestations of what anthropologist Niels Mulder would call “localization” of the Christian tradition as imported into the Philippines – or Filipinization. He posits a familial relation, so that flagellants are trying to help Christ and share his ordeal; the infant Jesus being easy to please (and dressed up as a fisherman or fireman) and thus a good channel for granting petitions; specific statues of Christ or saints as representations of power so that merely touching them or wiping one’s handkerchief on the feet transmits blessings. These are religious practices that are not necessarily connected to church-going and the Catholic hierarchy does try to understand these phenomena of the popular religion of their congregation.
This religiosity in politics and life recalls the pre-colonial world of pervasive spirits – both mostly benevolent anitos and malevolent aswang – in which most Filipinos still operate. (Mulder specifies his research was “among members of the educated, urban middle classes of Tagalog Filipino society.”) In a strange place one can still speak to the spirits to assure them that no harm is meant, that “we are just your grandchildren.”
Occasionally a foreign observer gets bewilderingly caught up in this, as Daniel Engber, senior editor at Slate, recently endured during a climb up Mindanao’s Dulang-dulang volcano, undergoing what he called a “spiritual protection racket” before climbing. The ceremony, which included a ritual slaughter of chickens, “done solely for the benefit of some imaginary beings, makes no sense to me,” he wrote.
On the other hand, he made it up the mountain (“tempting fate” as he put it) and back down again without mishap.
This is the sixth posting in the series, “A Representative Professor,” a weekly series during a teaching sabbatical at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Steven Rood is The Asia Foundation’s country representative in the Philippines. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual author and not those of The Asia Foundation.
The Philippines has many cultural similarities to the rest of Southeast Asia. Some similarities, take cockfighting for example, puzzle some Filipinos and give great pride to other Filipinos (particularly males). Cockfighting is pre-colonial (as the chronicler of Magellan’s voyage when it arrived in the Philippines, Antonio Pigafetta observed) and is shared with Southeast Asia as is obvious from the classic anthropological essay by Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight.”
Interestingly, though, Samuel Huntington in his “Clash of Civilizations” places the Philippines in the category of Western civilization. Perhaps this is unsurprising – the old stereotype is that the Philippines was “350 years in a convent, and then 50 years in Hollywood.” The religious impact of the “convent years” is a topic for another post, and the governance impact of the Spanish friarchy (a decentralized state with a weak center) was treated in last week’s post. In this week’s blog, I’m exploring the governance impact of the “Hollywood years” and efforts by Philippine presidents to overcome this impact.
American influence over the Philippines was far-reaching, with significant impact on the nation's culture and system of governance. Photo by Karl Grobl.
Almost immediately after America took colonial rule over the Philippines, it instituted elections: first municipal, then provincial, and then in 1907, it established elections for the Philippine Assembly. Filipino elites at the local level thrived under this deliberately decentralized regime that allowed the buildup of networks to the national level. Of course, since it was a colonial regime, the executive power was in the hands of Americans, but that was not long-lasting. In 1912, Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison began a rapid process of “Filipinization” and by 1919, Americans held only 5 percent of senior positions.
The point here is that there were powerful Filipino politicians before there were Filipino civil servants, so that, in Alfred McCoy’s words, the colonial bureaucracy was “effectively penetrated and manipulated” by the Filipino elites. This is the opposite of the general colonial pattern where the colonizer would allow indigenous bureaucrats before indigenous politics (since the former helped the colonizer carry out policy while the latter would challenge the colonizer). Renowned political scientist (and SAIS fellow) Francis Fukuyama points out that the same pattern held for the United States, with Jacksonian democracy being introduced in the 1830s whereas meritocratic civil service waited until the 1880s. He (perhaps controversially) thinks the quality of governance in the United States tends to be low – it certainly is not controversial that in the Philippines it is not. Bureaucrats in the Philippines lack the autonomy and prestige of bureaucrats elsewhere – which is obvious to anyone who has witnessed interactions between politicians and bureaucrats in a number of other countries. (more…)
One of the interesting things about team-teaching a course on “The Domestic Politics of Southeast Asia: The Philippines and Thailand” is that I myself have never taken a course on Southeast Asia. I was an American politics specialist as a graduate student, with a dissertation on “Interpretation and American Electoral Studies.” On the Philippines in particular, and on Southeast Asia more generally, I am an autodidact – I’ve learned it all by myself through 30 years of experience in the country and the region, and by reading.
There are limits to this approach, though, in that I have been “present centric” – my studying tends to start with the current situation and/or problem on which I’m working (as a researcher into contemporary politics, or as a development professional concerned with better governance). Rarely do I work my way back to, say, a 14th century Javanese kingdom to which the kingdom of Buayan in Mindanao claimed connection.
This sabbatical, and this blog, will, I hope, be an opportunity for me to look at broader, contextual elements of Southeast Asia in a way that formally-trained Southeast Asianists might find natural. My co-teacher, Karl Jackson, has assigned some of the classics of Southeast Asian studies, and they certainly provide food for thought. Robert Heine-Geldern’s “Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia,” originally published in 1943, is ambitious in looking at the “cosmo-magic principle” of parallels between human reality and the universe. In “Indianized” states – those influenced by Hinduism or Buddhism – often there is a representation of the holy Mount Meru in the center of the capital city, in a temple or a palace. This allows the influence of the King to radiate outwards. (more…)
