Corporate Watch
By Amelia H.C. Ylagan
BusinessWorld
BusinessWorld
The Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989; Soviet Russia dissolved in 1991; and the ground invasion of Iraq triggered the US cleanup of world terrorism. The future looked good. With a performance approval rating of 90% in 1991, President George Herbert Walker (the Elder) Bush would have been confident of reelection, except that Americans turned sharply and disapproved of him 64% in August 1992. How come?
It’s the economy, stupid! The decline in Bush’s ratings was accurately identified by the oppositionist candidate William Clinton’s campaign machinery with the people’s growing anxiety for the impending recession. Ronald Reagan had left a $220-billion budget deficit, which tripled with Bush’s expensive involvement in the Middle East; the economy in Bush’s term was slipping, and the Democrats shrewdly hammered for approval of unpopular issues of raising taxes and cutting spending as the scheme to ease the deficit by $500 billion over five years. Bush lost face to the people for not keeping his election promise, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”
“It’s the economy, stupid” started out as a reminder on Clinton’s campaign headquarters bulletin board for his strategists and political leaders to harp on the economic downturn as George HW Bush’s mortal sin to the American people. The phrase has become a “snowclone” or a familiar verbal formula that catches and conveys a conclusive evaluation of a contentious situation. “Stupid” may not mean that the person in front of the speaker is stupid, but more that the speaker is speaking to himself and saying, “Stupid me, why did I not think about that truism in the beginning?”
But of course, the acidity of the phrase would depend on the speaker’s secret personal evaluation of whom this is directed to — for it may not be a simple personal reminder to oneself but a stern recrimination to another person who might have been influential to the situation that is the basis for the stupidity. But in America,it does not seem to be as grievously slanderous to be called “stupid” to your face, as it would be in Asia. And so these snow clones with anything “stupid” did not catch on even with the “wurz-wurz” (twangy American English-speaking), cliche-loving Filipinos.
“It’s the economy, student!” former President Gloria Arroyo screamed at incumbent President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, her former student at Ateneo de Manila University some decades ago. Avoiding the word “stupid,” she nevertheless called him so in the unsubtle paraphrase of the condescending “It’s the economy, stupid!” In a 19-page paper dated January 12, 2012, and read at a press conference cum “academic” colloquium at the Manila Hotel, Arroyo extolled her accomplishments in her nine-year term and derided the performance of Aquino. The unblinking claim to intellectual superiority has been the hard-sell pitch of Arroyo against the successor government of Aquino, which, she claims, frittered away her economic legacy to the country.
The paper was supposedly written “in her spare time,” during Arroyo’s recuperation, hospitalization and hospital detention for alleged corruption and abuse of power during her presidency. Maybe it was properly foot-noted in accordance with a respectable bibliography, but an academic treatise in macroeconomics, which might need extensive primary and secondary research to arrive at dramatic econometric evaluations and conclusions, might need full focus and an assisting research team for much more than a month or two. Otherwise, call it just an ordinary brickbat from a cornered antagonist.
Arroyo pointed out in her paper that she left Malacanang in 2010 when the country was experiencing a 7.9% economic growth, while the country’s growth in the third quarter of 2011 was only 3.2%. The stand-alone figures by themselves are inadequate to mean much, if not presented in comparison to the figures for the region, as any economics professor should know. Reviewing the International Monetary Fund analysis of the GDP growth for the region in 2010, we can see that the whole region enjoyed hefty gains in that decade of Asia’s advantage in the US-triggered recession and the European “PIGS” (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) country debt problems. Singapore grew 14.5%, India 11.1%, Taiwan 10.8%, China 10.3% and Sri Lanka 8%. All other countries in Asia below these enjoyed 7% or more GDP growth at that time, as did the Philippines. (Per the IMF data, growth in Philippine GDP was 7.6% in 2010 and Thailand was 7.8%.)
Then again, economics professors must not present percentage growths without citing the absolute GDP value-base for the delta increase. Jobs and other production factors must be analyzed with GDP, with poverty and equality, human rights and ecology ratios benchmarked on the regional efforts and the global situation. What had Arroyo done to alleviate the plight of the 30 million Filipinos (2006) who live below the international poverty line of $2/day?
Arroyo’s former professor at the University of the Philippines College of Economics, Gonzalo Jurado, said he gave Arroyo a “1” (top grade) when she was his student. Jurado, who presented the Arroyo economic paper to the press last week, said he would not even give Aquino a grade of “5” (lowest grade) but “10,” because Aquino’s government does not have a plan. Unfortunately, some of those intimidated by the title, “Economist” would tend to believe that the economy indeed went well during the last decade, thanks to Arroyo. Economic plans, to those not formally trained in economics, might come through as intricate blueprints for success that can only be produced, implemented and evaluated in a self-serving manner by the breed-apart nerds called economists.
Aquino does have medium and long-term plans for productivity and employment, poverty, human rights and the ecology. It’s just that maybe, these plans and projects are not presented adequately by proper PR machinery. There might need to be more drumbeating on projects and accomplishments, like Gloria Arroyo, The Economist of 2001-2010, did for herself, whether she merited the solicited accolades or not.
Anyway, as the ratings show, the majority of the Filipino people seem to agree with your plans, PNoy. You are right to focus first on the corruption drive and the culprits who have stolen from the country. “It’s the Economist, Genius!”
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