Instead of Federalism

By Antonio C. Abaya
Written on May 05, 2008
For the Standard Today,
May 06 issue


It is unfortunate that Sen. Nene Pimentel chose not to reply to my article Federal Fol-de-Rol (April 28, 2008). As principal author of a Senate resolution calling for convening the Senate and the Lower House into a constituent assembly to convert the country from a unitary state to a federal union before the end of President Arroyo's presidential term in 2010, his refusal to reply to a serious and detailed critique suggests that he does not really know or understand what he is advocating.

My critique of his resolution rests on five principal grounds: a) it is a Trojan Horse to re-introduce a twice-defeated (in 2006-07) maneuver to shift to a parliamentary system, to enable President Arroyo to remain in power beyond 2010, as prime minister, similar to the maneuver of Vladimir Putin in Russia;

b) the resolution's stated objective, "to spur economic growth," is a no-brainer since, as I pointed out in my article, the Philippines' failure to develop as fast as its neighbors in the past 50 years can be traced to poor, even stupid economic policies and strategies, not to its being a unitary state;

c) most of the successful countries in our part of the world – Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand – all achieved economic success as unitary states; only one - Malaysia – as a federal union; so there is nothing wrong with being a unitary state as long as the correct economic strategies and policies are pursued; on the other hand, a federal union with wrong economic strategies and policies would stagnate, e.g. autarkic and xenophobic Myanmar, under military rule since 1962.

d) archipelagic countries – Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines – are unitary states also for pragmatic reasons: being made up of islands, they are vulnerable to centrifugal forces that would encourage secession and disunity.

e) I challenged Sen. Pimentel to name even only one example of a country that shifted from unitary to federal – or from federal to unitary – and thus achieved prosperity as a result of that shift. He has not obliged.

There are other reasons for not shifting to federalism, which I will articulate in due time. While most of my readers agreed with me, I will for the moment focus on those who disagreed, who argued from largely emotional reasons, without any basis in economics, history, geography, political science, ethno-linguistics or just plain common sense. These reactions, pro and con, appear in Reactions to Federal Fol-de-Rol.

Such as, for example, the oft repeated lament that Imperial Manila is imposing Tagalog-based Filipino on the rest of the country. This is not a valid argument for federalism. Every country has one or two official languages (Switzerland has three), and dozens, even hundreds, of other languages and dialects outside the capital region.

China, for example has 123 million citizens – 9.4% of the total population – who are not ethnic Han Chinese, who speak their own languages and practice their own religions, but who are required to learn Mandarin in school, as are hundreds of millions of Han Chinese who are native speakers of Hakka, Cantonese, Hainanese, Shanghainese, Fookienese, and other regional languages and dialects.

Bahasa Indonesia, the official language of Indonesia, is based on the language spoken in Riau in northern Sumatra. But there are millions and tens of millions of Indonesians who are native speakers of Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, Amboinese, etc but who are required to learn Riau-based Bahasa in school.

Even the French spoken in and around Paris is not the same French spoken in the other departements where the natives speak their own dialects: Breton, Norman, Alsacien, Auvergnois, Languedoc, Provencal, Limousin, Corsican, etc. However, they are required to learn the Metropolitan French of Paris in school.

The same is true about Hindi in India, Urdu in Pakistan, Farsi in Iran, even Spanish in Spain, Italian in Italy, German in Germany, etc There is always a dominant language, which becomes the national language for practical reasons, and all other languages and dialects take subsidiary positions.

Tagalog-based Filipino became dominant because of the influence of Tagalog radio programs (especially before the days of television), Tagalog TV programs and Tagalog movies, not because of "Tagalog imperialism." In the 1960s, there was a Cebuano movie industry, but it never acquired a nationwide audience. It simply died away, leaving Tagalog movies dominant by default.

(My siblings and I grew up in a tri-lingual family. Our father [from Laguna] spoke to us in Tagalog, our mother [from Cagayan de Oro City] spoke to us in Cebuano. When we traveled or studied abroad, we wrote to each other in English. I subsequently married my wife, who came from Zamboanga City but who never bothered to speak Chavacano to me or our children. We have no hang-ups about "Tagalog imperialism," even though none us can recall [or care about] the "pure Tagalog" that we learned in high school.)

But I agree that Visayas and Mindanao are under-represented in the highest level of the power structure: the offices of president, vice-president and senator. Of the eleven presidents since Manuel Quezon, only three came from Visayas/Mindanao: Sergio Osmena of Cebu, briefly after the death of Quezon in 1944; Manuel Roxas of Capiz, and Carlos Garcia of Bohol.,

Of the eleven vice-presidents, only five came from Visayas/Mindanao: Osmena, Garcia, Fernando Lopez of Iloilo, Emmanuel Pelaez of Misamis Oriental (an uncle of ours), and Teofisto Guingona of Surigao.

But this can be remedied without going through the bother and expense of switching to a federal union. We would consume billions of pesos to change from a unitary state to a federal union, and additional billions of pesos to maintain that union.

It would mean creating additional layers of trapos and bureaucrats to man state legislatures, state governments and state supreme courts. This would benefit existing political dynasties who would make sure that these positions are filled up by members of their dynasties, thereby strengthening feudalism in this country, similar to the situations in pre-Meiji Japan and pre-Mao China.

In the present situation, these billions of pesos are better spent boosting food production so that we become self-sufficient in food and save millions of Filipinos from involuntary hunger and starvation This is infinitely more important than changing the political system. Which can be discussed later, but AFTER 2010, to prevent the Trojan Horse from sneaking in, with GMA crouching inside, scheming to become prime minister..

AFTER 2010, we should also discuss the election of senators on a regional basis, instead of the present election at large. If we were to assign two or three senatorial seats per region, we would be making sure that EVERY region is adequately and always represented in the Senate.

In the present electoral system for the Senate, Metro Manila, Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog and Bicol are over-represented, Mindanao and Visayas are under-represented, and Bangsa Moro is NOT REPRESENTED AT ALL. This scandalous state of affairs has been going on for decades. Is it any wonder that the Muslims want to secede?.

Of the six or seven readers who disagreed with me, only one, Manuel Lino G. Faelnar, had done any research and based his arguments on empirical, factual grounds. Sen. Pimentel should hire him as researcher. I will respond to him in a future article. *****

Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com.