Will crisis slow down globalization?

The proposal to reform Europe’s agriculture subsidy program had just been booed down. The slowdown in American consumer demand will negatively affect imports, particularly from Asia. Australians are using all sorts of excuses to prevent competing agricultural products from entering their markets. World leaders are all talking of looking into the strength of their domestic markets to help them weather the economic storm.

It is just as well that President Arroyo ordered the DTI to review our schedule of tariff cuts. During the term of FVR, some of his economic advisers wanted to show the world how macho we are in the matter of free trade. They then offered to cut tariff of a number of product categories, not just to Asean but to the rest of the world, ahead of our international commitments.

Mar Roxas was explaining to me last Friday that there is no logical reason why we should, for instance, bring down tariff on cars when everyone else is still imposing duties of anywhere from 30 percent to over 100 percent? What will happen to the investors and the jobs they are now supporting if we open them up for competition with countries that won’t give them similar treatment?

Now that the domestic economy is our last hope for salvation in a world afflicted with an economic slowdown, we just have to exercise our right to think twice, constant bullying from developed countries notwithstanding. The Doha round can’t even get started in earnest because the developed countries are dead set on protecting their own even as they are forcing the rest of the world to open up.

There is no doubt that eventually, artificial barriers like tariffs will have to go down. But the current world economic crisis will likely slow it down, with all due respect to globalization and the WTO. In any case the WTO must also simply make sure this open markets idea happens under the most equitable conditions. In fact, if poverty in the third world is to be tamed, some bias in policy must be made to favor the developing countries. Bullying by the developed countries must be contained.

Nowhere is this bullying more evident these days than in the aviation industry. American carriers, for example, aren’t exactly the most economic operators in the world, but their government is protecting them to the hilt, contrary to the dictates of a free market economy. The US government is doing that because of the industry’s importance to national security, among others.

This should also be the mindset of our government. While we should not condone inefficiency and corruption in our carriers, we shouldn’t offer them up as sacrificial lambs, just to please America. In other words, we shouldn’t adopt policies that would cause our carriers the loss of their competitiveness or even viability.

Much have been written about the open skies debate but suffice it to note that the bilateral agreement with the US is too lopsided to favor the American carriers. Once the open skies provision of our current air transport agreement takes effect a year from now as is, we may just as well kiss our carriers goodbye without making a dent in the tourism drive. I doubt if that is in the national interest.

Let us not be embarrassed or timid to protect our own. The Americans, the Europeans and the Japanese are still doing it as a matter of policy. Why should we be different?

Ate Glo’s sex life

I am really disappointed at Raissa Robles for asking that question about Ate Glo’s sex life in a nationally televised news conference. I expected a lot more from her because she is one of the really good reporters around, world class, if you ask me. Gee, Raissa, why the fixation? Aren’t you getting enough from Alan these days? Lost out to a computer, did you? What business is it of anyone to know how many times a day, a week, a month or a year Ate Glo gets screwed? Our only interest is assuring that the nation doesn’t get screwed.

This brings to mind my journ classes under Prof. Perfecto Fernandez, Hernando Abaya, Armando Malay, Amando Doronila and Jose Luna Castro. The big philosophical issue then as it still is now, is how to decide what is in the public interest and what is just public curiosity. Raissa’s question about how many times Ate Glo has sex seems a bit personal and something that falls under the curiosity section. Now, if the head of state, not necessarily Ate Glo, is having an affair with an enemy agent and divulges state secrets during orgasm, a journalist is duty bound to expose that in the national interest.

I am worried that the fact the question was asked in a very public setting, speaks of how we have trivialized the presidency. Puede nang bastusin ng ganyan na lang. Maybe some of those who occupied the position in the past demeaned the office, but by continually demeaning it, as that question did, don’t we demean ourselves, our country in the process? I can’t believe Raissa’s editors at the South China Morning Post are interested in the sex life of our President.

I guess it is symptomatic of the tabloid mentality that has infected the nation. I get the impression that we have elected our last few presidents not to run the country but to publish a newspaper and produce a newscast. The photo op mindset has reduced the time frame of our leaders from six years to six hours or up to deadline time. It is our duty, however, to stop the fall.

Maybe Raissa just wanted to know if Ate Glo’s hot flashes explain why she’s been so masungit to some Cabinet members lately. Or maybe, she is mataray because she had not been getting any lately. Or if she is liable to declare war on China over the Spratley fishermen because she didn’t get any or maybe because, as Ping Lacson suggested, she is getting too much.

Well, Mike Arroyo better watch out. Next time, he just might be asked what is the best position for a man who is by his own admission, 40 pounds overweight. Does he really use some kind of a bedside crane to lift him up as some coffee shop gossips joke?

Maybe, just so long as we are being entertained, the problems of the world wouldn’t weary us so much. What a country!

Viagra

Since we are on the subject of sex, here is today’s joke, contributed by Marilyn Mana-ay Robles.

A man goes to visit his 85-year-old Grandpa in the hospital. "How are you Grandpa?" he asks.

"Feeling fine," says the old man.

"What’s the food like?"

"Terrific, wonderful menus."

"And the nursing?"

"Just couldn’t be better. These young nurses really take care of you."

"What about sleeping? Do you sleep OK?"

"No problem at all nine hours solid every night. At 10 o’clock they bring me a cup of hot chocolate and a Viagra tablet ... and that’s it. I go out like a light."

The grandson is puzzled and a little alarmed by this, so rushes off to question the nurse in charge. "What are you people doing," he says, "I’m told you’re giving an 85-year-old Viagra on a daily basis. Surely that can’t be true?"

"Oh, yes," replies the nurse. "Every night at 10 o’clock we give him a cup of chocolate and a Viagra tablet. It works wonderfully well.

The chocolate makes him sleep, and the Viagra stops him from rolling out of bed."

(Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected])