What to do with the Philippine oligarchs

I have once taken note that with Catholicism and Spanish Aristocracy, the basis of our elitist, patrimonlialist and hierarchical system could be explained in the following:

The friar system reformists like Rizal intended to dismantle had an entrenched network of power relations among its surrogates, mostly landowning families of Chinese descent who originally had served as stewards for the estates of the monastic orders, morphed into hispanized hacienderos, then transitioned as mutually-buttressing guilds or factions of Marxian bourgeois and cosmopolitan elites. In hindsight, one would be hard put to surmise whether the uprising fueled by Rizal’s ultimate sacrifice could have ended the system (had the Americans not come into the picture from out of the blue). The fact is that Rizal had been fearful in Fili, and rightly so, of “(freeing) the slaves of today, if they will be the tyrants of tomorrow.” For, those who were waiting in the wings—to succeed to the powers of the Pulpit—were fawning sycophants, hostage and servile but only to the fat friar. To the ignorant and powerless, like the Crispins and the Basilios of Noli, they were as fiendish and callous hirelings who savored every conceivable scent of power, as was the petty and abusive parish sacristan mayor who, as the darker side of the Filipino character in the novel, had made use of every niggling authority it had arrogated unto himself. Still, and in fairness, there were many of them who emerged as the ilustrado, the enlightened ones, and joined the nationalist movement against Spain and then, but only for a fleeting chapter, against the Americans.

Many ilustrados, to preserve their privileges, abandoned the nationalist cause to collaborate with the Americans even while the war was in progress. They saw themselves as heirs apparent and logical beneficiaries of yet another “royal grant” from the new sovereign.

Let me fast forward to more contemporary events.

The political instinct of Ferdinand Marcos, it is fitting to remember, has served him well in his practical analysis of power politics in the Philippines. One of his claims was that the scourge of the country has in the main been the oligarchy of economic elites, some 60 families of a population of 40 million then. These families, mostly of Chinese descent, by their elitist bent and plutocratic complex, think they own the country (of about 85 million souls today), so for them it is just right to govern it – through their trapo surrogates.

Marcos’ solution to the problem was to dismantle the old power and wealth. Unfortunately, by doing so through the use of dictatorial powers, he created another version just as virulent.

Cory Aquino and the EDSA Revolution that ended the dictatorship restored political and civil rights to the Filipinos, but she stopped short at confronting her own shadow and those cast by the reinstated oligarchic clan of which she is a part. She’s just a transition leader, the convenient excuse.

Aquino’s successor, FVR, a West Pointer and a Marcos cousin, was well aware of the “perverse symbiosis” between the oligarchs and trapos, yet he knew as well without doing a Marcos any meaningful change initiative on his part would have limited chance of success. His reform programs could have picked up more steam if he was accorded longer time to lead. In the end President Ramos conducted himself as a good soldier and decided to respect the constitutional limit of his presidential term.

Supposedly populist Erap, once a Marcos lieutenant, was seen as a threat to “the rules of the game.” To the chagrin of the established elites, President Estrada has closely associated himself with the Binondo Chinese (Rizal’s Chinaman?); he in fact has driven a wedge between the “new immigrants” and the “Makati elites.” Consequently, his term was rendered short-lived. It was however under Erap’s watch that many more of the Marcos cronies sneaked back to power.

Wily Gloria Arroyo is the quintessential conservative (i.e., she has professed not wishing to be great, or adventuristic, intending only to “conserve” - even after EDSA II had swept her to power ahead of her schedule after evicting the “Champion of the Poor” - the old tradition and ideology of “market and democracy,” thereby keeping intact the existing wealth and power distribution). So, logically, in the presidential election that followed, the Establishment opted for Arroyo to rule instead of another Erap in FPJ, the Opposition candidate and the Man who would have been Da King.

The oligarchy of the economic class likes it when the political class like Arroyo, beset with one scandal after another, is helpless, a lame duck. If she can’t effectively muscle her way, the powers that be could simply sit tight, allowing the system to operate by auto-drive.

On the other hand, the oligarchy secures itself from external pressure for as long as it toes the Washington Consensus line in an “almost sycophantic” fashion even as on the sly it nurtures relations with its “roots” from China, the awakened Dragon with creeping global extremities. That way, it gains more confidence of having wider latitude to navigate the waters of regional as well as global political economy

A crack in the wall has however begun to appear as more and more of the oligarchs’ counterparts in the region have been consistently outperforming them. That nasty sore spot exposes the Philippine version of oligarchic regime as one of a lower or inferior form especially in the eyes of the “move-on” Filipino middleclass. As a result, this class has become increasingly “relatively deprived” even while going through some sort of enlightenment, as well as perhaps conscience-stricken by the inhuman plight of the vast hoi polloi and the Payatas horde.

To cut to the chase, the holy mess the Philippines is in today has been about the extreme disparity in wealth and power between the oligarchs and the rest of society. The problem is confounded and yet propped up by the twin ideology that’s supposed to serve as the solution – the “market and democracy” construct first hailed by President Manuel L. Quezon as the “new ideology in Asia.” For, what was seen as “the greatest event of modern civilization in the Orient” did not seem to fit the following Philippine realities outside of some borrowed idealism:

- First, the Philippine oligarchy is exceedingly family-centered which has yet to subordinate its ancient roots to the Filipino nation-state. (This baggage is non-existent in longtime world economic power Japan and in the “tiger economies” of Taiwan, South Korea and China which are all essentially homogenous societies; on the other hand, city-state Singapore has confronted this problem by decreeing integration, while Malaysia has institutionalized affirmative action for the Bumiputra, the “sons of the soil.”)

- The oligarchy is content with rent-seeking and paper entrepreneurship and of late is ignoring or failing to make the most of the OWF-generated boon as a medium for sustainable growth and development. Even as corporate entrepreneurs the oligarchs are still basically engaged in family-enterprise capitalism (where as owners they, rather than professional corporate managers, continue to be in control of the entrepreneurial decision-making) but, take note, are somehow disposed to leapfrog right into modern financial capitalism (of the speculative financier type or as traders in money), possibly skipping in the process the productive and employment-generating stages of industrial and managerial capitalisms.

In a nutshell, my preferred prescription for a successful solution to the scourge of oligarchy includes:

- The “tsinoy” oligarchs must do a Rizal (himself a direct descendant of Cue-Li Lam, an immigrant from Fujian, China) to form the Second Filipinos (the First Filipinos being Rizal and co.).

- Like the pariahs and the pirates of the ancient (who were the direct ancestors of the First Filipinos), the oligarchs, matching the risk taken by the OFWs, must venture into vigorous productive entrepreneurships.

- As risk-takers, the oligarchs must not allow their resourcefulness and imagination to be needlessly constrained, contained or contaminated by what was once touted as the “new ideology in Asia,” those pre-conceived notions of “market and democracy” that are themselves being re-imagined to obviate the inevitability of fading or dying away in a “creative destruction.” Instead, they could just attach a neutral appellation to the transformation process, a tag as simple as Design A or Design B.

The design could be something like operating under a Bayanihan Pact, an entrepreneurial arrangement where the oligarchs emerge as national business elites in partnership with the State, a representative group from the private sector, and the bureaucracy (hence, there’s no need for a bloody confrontation) in the nature of a Philippine, Inc., just as a Japan, Inc., a Korean, Inc. or a China, Inc., of recent time or the French, Inc. the British, Inc. or the American, Inc. of the old.

The U.S., the most advanced economy today, differed in economic strategy during its growing pains from the longer established European powers. Alexander Hamilton argued that a young country should use measures to shield its own industries from the vagaries of the market.