Federal Fol-de-rol

By Antonio C. Abaya
Written on April 28, 2008
For the Standard Today,
April 30 issue


My American Heritage Dictionary defines 'fol-de-rol' as 'foolish talk or procedure, or nonsense.' And that is what this recurring advocacy for federalism is: foolish talk and nonsense.

Senate Minority Leader Nene Pimentel is principal author of a Senate resolution calling for a debate on Charter Change (again), for a revision of the Constitution to shift from a unitary to a federal system of government. And Pimentel wants this debate to happen before the presidential elections in 2010.

The resolution was signed by eleven other senators: Senate President Manny Villar, and Senators Jinggoy Estrada, Francis Pangilinan, Edgardo Angara, Rodolfo Biazon, Pia Cayetano, Juan Ponce Enrile, Francis Escudero, Gregorio Honasan, Panfilo Lacson Jr.., and Ramon Revilla Jr.

The resolution seeks to convene both Houses of Congress into a Constitutional Assembly (ConAss) to amend the Constitution before the end of President Arroyo's term in 2010. It seeks to convert the
country into a federal union of 11 states: Northern Luzon, Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, Bicol, Minparom (Mindoro, Palawan, Romblon), Eastern Visayas, Central Visayas, Western Visayas, Northern Mindanao, Southern Mindanao and BangsaMoro.

The motivation supposedly is "to spur economic growth." The implication is that economic growth is not possible, or is not fast enough, under a unitary state..

This is a lot of nonsense. The empirical evidence is that of the most successful countries in East and Southeast Asia, only one – Malaysia – is a federal union. The others – Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand – are all unitary states. So, contrary to what Nene Pimentel and his 11 apostles apparently believe, economic progress – even spectacular economic progress, in the cases of Japan, China and South Korea – is achievable and has been achieved under unitary states..

In fact, it can be argued that if Japan had chosen to become a federal union in the 19th century, ruled as it was by dozens of land-owning daimyos or feudal lords with their armies of samurai warriors, it would have been mired in endless civil wars, as it in fact was, between the competing daimyos, and would not have morphed into a world power.

Fortunately for the Japanese, the Tokugawa shoguns, who had been in power since 1598, were finally replaced with the restoration of the Meiji Emperor in 1867. Under the unifying leadership of Emperor Mutsushito and a strong centralized unitary state, Japan became an industrialized world power.

Japan defeated a weak China in 1895, annexing Formosa (now known as Taiwan) and Korea as a result of that victory, defeated Russia in 1905, entered World War I on the side of the Allies, and then challenged those Allies in World War II. Japan remains a unitary state to this day, the second biggest economy in the world for decades, until it was overtaken in the last few years by China, another unitary state.

China itself remained a weak state even after it became a republic under Sun Yat-sen in 1912. As in medieval Japan, China – under the Mongol-based Manchu dynasty which had ruled the majority Han Chinese since 1644 – was racked by endless internal wars between competing feudal warlords. Even Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang, who came to power in 1928, were not able to unify China.

It was the strong leadership of Mao Ze-dong and the unitary state under the Chinese Communist Party that finally united the Han Chinese and gave them a sense of nationhood that was absent for centuries. And it was the re-embrace of capitalism and the profit motive, starting in 1979, by the pragmatist Deng Xiao-ping, that propelled China to its present pre-eminent status as an economic super-power.

Pimentel and his 11 apostles should also know that the empirical evidence is that archipelagic countries, of which there are only three – Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines – are unitary states, rather than federal unions, for pragmatic reasons. Being made up of islands, they would be vulnerable to centrifugal forces if they were to spin off into federal unions.

The example of Japan is cited above. Indonesia would likewise be threatened with disunity. The Indonesians have already lost predominantly Roman Catholic East Timor. It managed to keep rebellious Aceh. There are separatist movements brewing in Irian Jaya, Manado and Kalimantan, and predominantly Hindu Bali would also likely spin off, if the Indonesians were stupid enough to change to a federal union.

Pimentel and his 11 apostles ignore or are not even aware of the fact that nations keep the political system that they started out with. They just try to make it better as the decades roll along.

Can Pimentel and his 11 apostles cite even one example in the last 60 years of a country that switched from a unitary state to a federal union, or from a federal union to a unitary state? Or from the presidential to the parliamentary system, or from parliamentary to presidential? And suddenly achieved elusive prosperity as a result of that switch? They can't because there isn't any..

Even the federal union that was Yugoslavia broke up into pieces – Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, after the death of its founder, Marshall Tito. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in that break-up, as the majority Serbs tried to keep the federal union intact, the bloodiest genocide in Europe since WWII.

I am not aware of any country that can serve as an inspirational model for the Philippines. There were cases where the change was forced by revolution or invasion, such as the nations of Eastern Europe switching from parliamentary to a communist system after they were overrun by the Soviet Army in 1945-48, then switching back to parliamentary after their communist regimes collapsed in 1989.

The empirical evidence is that nations keep the political system that they started out with. In the 1980s, there was a move in the Indian parliament to shift to a presidential system,, but the move did not prosper. The Israelis also amended the Westminster parliamentary model by having one of their prime ministers (Binyamin Netanyahu) elected by popular vote, instead of by the majority party in parliament, but they did not shift to the presidential system.

Russia is slowly creeping from a presidential system to parliamentary. But this is just to allow Vladimir Putin to remain in power as prime minister after his non-extendable presidential term ended last March. Which, as I wrote in a column in late 2007, may be the model that President Arroyo may follow to remain in power beyond 2010'

Supposedly oppositionist Pimentel would ironically be setting the stage for this to happen by pushing for ChaCha before the presidential elections of 2010. The Gloria in excelsis Dado chorus in Congress would likely interject: "Since we are debating federalism, we might as well debate parliamentary also." Some people are so naïve..

Pimentel and his 11 apostles are no doubt motivated by patriotic reasons when they advocate a shift to a federal union "in order to spur economic growth." But economic growth is a function of economic strategies, not of political systems. Our GDP grew by 7.3% in 2007 under our unitary state, better than the growth of Malaysia under its federal union.

Of course, Malaysia has been out-performing the Philippines in previous decades. But Malaysia has also been out-performed during those decades by South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, all unitary
states.

The relative economic failure of the Philippines, compared to its neighbors, is examined in detail in my article Why Are We Poor? (Dec. 14, 2004):

http://www.geocities.com/dapat_tapatt/whyarewepoor.html .

In a nutshell, we are poor because a) in the late 1950s our Congress passed a Minimum Wage Law, which discouraged American firms from setting up factories here in the 1960s, preferring instead Hong Kong and Taiwan where wages, believe it or not, were lower than in Manila and where there was - and still is - no minimum wage law;

b) in the 1970s, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, geared their economies towards the export of manufactured goods, which was the basis for their industrialization. The Philippines did not. In 2006, the exports of South Korea amounted to $326.0 billion, Singapore $283.6b; Taiwan $215.0b; the Philippines only $47.2b.

c) in the 1980s, Malaysia, Thailand and Suharto's Indonesia followed the example of the original Four Asian Tigers and also geared their economies towards the export of manufactured goods. The Philippines did not. In 2006, the exports of Malaysia totaled $158.7b; Thailand $123.6b; Indonesia $102.3b; the Philippines only $47.2b. There is always a penalty for being late..

d) in the 1990s, most of Southeast Asia rode a tourism boom. The Philippines did not. In 1991, Indonesia and the Philippines drew one million tourists each. In 2007, Indonesia was attracting six million tourists, the Philippine barely managed three million. Vietnam, long a tourism laggard because of its war-ravaged infrastructure, drew 4.2 million tourists in 2007, overtaking the Philippines. Watch out for tiny Cambodia: it took in two million tourists last year.(Thailand
attracted 13 million tourists, Malaysia 16 million in 2007.)

e) even with its weak manufacturing sector caused by its failure to industrialize like its neighbors, the Philippines – led by President Ramos and Senator Gloria Arroyo - foolishly embraced free trade and globalization, even ahead of fully developed South Korea and Taiwan, causing many domestic producers to retrench or close shop in the face of unlimited imports, and throwing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos out of work, forcing them to look for jobs overseas.

f) even with a weak average GDP growth rate of less than 3.5% per annum from 1983 to 2003, the Philippine government, except under President Ramos, failed to take measures to control its population, which grew by an average of 2.5% during the same period, leaving very meager economic gains, especially for the poorest of the poor.

In 2006, our population growth rate has dropped to 1.91%. But look at our competitors: Malaysia 1.76, Indonesia 1.34, Vietnam 1.04, Thailand 0.66, China 0.65, Singapore 0.48, South Korea 0.39, Taiwan 0.24. (All statistics are from the 2008 World Almanac and Book of Facts).

Because of poor, even stupid, economic strategies and policies, the Philippines has lost out to its neighbors, both in the ability to earn income for its people, and in the ability to conserve and spread that meager income to a rapidly multiplying population.

That in a nutshell is the economic picture of the Philippines in the last 50 years. Any claim that this can be remedied simply by amending the Constitution to switch from a unitary state to a federal union is a lot of bull. Fol-de-rol. *****