I ASKED this question because it took only exactly 31 days today for a simple man what his five predecessors failed to do in 30 years: To put a clearer direction to where this beautiful country is going.
I am referring to hardworking and visionary President Duterte, 71, a proud promdi, who, in just one month in office with no budget of his own yet, has cleared the streets of drug addicts and pushers; served notice to grafters, corruptors and other fraudsters; tamed terrorists and separatists; unified the fragmented police and military organizations; brought together the divided and vociferous Congress; stopped red tape in government; fast-tracked the issuance of permits and clearances; set a direction for good, honest and progressive governance; and, among others, declared a total industrialization direction
for the country.
In that 30 years, or one generation to be exact, the country saw the presidency change hands five times, from Corazon C. Aquino, to Fidel V. Ramos, to Joseph E. Estrada, to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and to Benigno S. Aquino III, who spent an accumulated budget of more than P35 trillion and yet, the country, despite its strategic location and vast natural and human resources, remains today at the bottom of the five original founding members of the Asean organized in 1967.
The other four, already industrialized and economically progressive, are Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
But why have they become progressive?
The answer is simple: They have become industrialists with clearly defined social- and national-security policies. In short, they care more about economics than they do of politics. Most of all, their constitutions are clear, simple and easy to understand.
By comparison, the Philippine Constitution even posed as an instrument of its perpetual enslavement, having remained a neocolonial, agrarian and feudal State.
For instance, Article XII, Section 1, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution reads as follows: “The State shall promote industrialization and full employment based on sound agricultural development and agrarian reform through industries that make full and efficient use of human and natural resources, and which are competitive in both domestic and foreign markets. However, the State shall protect Filipino enterprises against unfair foreign competition and trade practices.”
If you analyze it, this provision automatically prohibits an industrial policy based on the heavy industries and the application of protectionist measures against foreign competition, whether fair or unfair.
The late Harvard-trained lawyer-economist Alejandro “Ding” Lichauco said: While the provision stipulates that the “State shall promote industrialization,” it simultaneously qualifies constitutional directive with an entire complex of conditions and limiting reservations, which makes it impossible for the State to adopt any industrialization strategy, other than one that is specifically and exclusively based on “sound agricultural development and agrarian reform,” whatever that means.
“For example,” he said, “the provision literally prohibits an industrialization strategy based on the heavy industries, like steel, chemicals, machine tools and machine production. That’s precisely the kind of strategy that made newly industrialized countries [NICs] of our neighbors.”
“This provision contradicted Section 7, Article II, of the Constitution [Declaration of Principles and State Policies]: The State shall pursue an independent foreign policy. In its relations with other states, the paramount consideration shall be national sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interest and the right to self-determination,” Lichauco argued.
He pointed out that “Our neighbors, particularly South Korea and Taiwan, didn’t transform into NICs through the industrialization strategy explicitly mandated by the above-cited provision of our Constitution. Those countries, imitating Japan, pursued an industrialization strategy anchored on the development of industries based on and moved by machine power rather than on ‘sound agricultural development and agrarian reform.’”
According to him, real industrialization program is one that is based on what is known as the capital-goods industry—industries based on machine power and the production of what is known as the means of production. Any other industrialization program can only be a program based on light consumer industries that are totally dependent on industrial raw material and industrial machines produced by the industrialized countries.
President Duterte was right when he took issue against the flawed 1987 Aquino Constitution that arguably reduced the country to the pre-industrial age, economically and socially retrogressing, instead of progressing. He was very clear on this when he declared at his first State of the Nation Address to adopt full industrialization for the country.
It can be recalled that after the fall of the Marcos regime following the 1986 Edsa mutiny, the succeeding administration of the late President Aquino invoked the powers of a revolutionary government, abolished the 1973 Constitution, scrapped the Batasan Pambansa (Parliament), the Supreme Court, local government units and the civil and military services.
To provide her administration with democratic legitimacy, it arrogated power unto herself, hand-picked 48 men and women, including prelates and suspected communists, and framed the 1987 Constitution, the substance and wordings of which, due mostly to the hatred of Marcos and accommodations of the diverse political, social and economic interests of the framers, became the longest in Philippine history and probably in the world.
As a result, it had 97 open-ended and ambiguous provisions that were entrusted to Congress to provide the enabling law with equally nebulous phrases: “…as may be provided by law” or “as Congress may provide.”
The ball game is now with Congress to convene it into a constitutional assembly to revise or amend as soon as possible the 1987 flawed Constitution.
Failure to do so will be on the conscience of the members of Congress, which, for sure, will hound them forever.
To contact this writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com