Reform or perish

Remember that line? Everyone should have heeded it when it was uttered by President Arroyo months ago. Now it’s in danger of being relegated to the archive of catchy sound bites and political rhetoric, in the same league as the strong republic.

To be fair, the President has a good grasp of what’s wrong with this country and what must be done. I will always remember her speech last December, when she expressed our frustrations about being left behind by a rapidly changing world. But she has been hobbled since Day One by politics, the machinations of the populist man she replaced, the ambitions of people around her, and endless speculation about her plans for 2004.

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Half a year after that speech, there is growing frustration about the pace of reforms in the Arroyo administration. You heard the very public lament of the sleepless ambassador of Japan, Kojiro Takano. As I’ve written, it looked like Takano meant every negative assessment he made of the Philippines. Not only that; the talk is that he even cleared his message (except for the sleepless part) with his superiors in Japan. Takano is known in Tokyo as a diplomatic troubleshooter, sent to problematic spots abroad. To give you an idea: one of his previous assignments was to meet with officials in North Korea.

Did President Arroyo raise the Takano case during her visit to Japan? If she did, neither Malacañang nor the Department of Foreign Affairs is talking. The silence was probably helped along by the $1 billion in official aid committed to the Philippines by Tokyo during the President’s visit.

The buzz in Manila is that Takano was in fact waiting to be declared persona non grata. This would have been taken by Tokyo as a sign of the Arroyo administration’s resistance to reforms — and coolness to further official development assistance from Japan. I hesitate to say we can’t kick out a tactless insomniac diplomat because we need his country’s ODA, but it looks like that’s what happened to the Takano case.

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An equally damning assessment of the state of the nation is embodied in the first-ever detailed advocacy paper released by the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines.

The major points made in the paper have already been reported. It does attempt to be upbeat: the title is "The Roadmap to More Foreign Investments." And unlike the usual carping critics, the paper does contain many recommendations for putting the nation back on track.

The first AmCham was set up by eight friends in July 1902 at Clarke’s Place in Manila. If I recall my history books correctly, Clarke’s was a popular ice cream parlor in the city. Many of the Americans who first started businesses in Manila were part of the US Volunteer Corps. According to a blurb for Spanning the Decades, a book marking AmCham’s centennial in the Philippines, those early American settlers did not see the country as a US colony. Instead "they assumed the archipelago would become a US territory, much as Oklahoma and Arizona were still."

"AmCham members have been committed to this country and its people for more than a century. In this spirit we are seeking to join in the debate of recent years about the mounting challenges facing the Philippine economy," AmCham president George Henefeld wrote to people who were given copies of the advocacy paper.

To President Arroyo, Henefeld wrote: "Our Chamber is committed to the past, present and future of the Philippines and we are advocates and supporters of your democracy, free market and strong republic."

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Having received that assurance, however, the temperamental President GMA will have to read the paper when she is in good humor. Her efforts to reverse negative perceptions of the Philippines abroad have been "sincere but to date inadequate," according to the paper. "The political will of the public sector needs substantial stiffening to achieve a truly strong republic," it adds.

The group seems to have given up on seeing any Philippine president going against the Church and implementing an aggressive family planning program; it suggests that the private sector simply take over the job. If the population boom is left unchecked, AmCham warns, the Philippines can hope to catch up with Thailand’s per capita income only in 2065.

Contrary to initial reports, AmCham’s main concern is not security but corruption, with inadequate infrastructure coming a close second. Corruption has abetted the deficit problem and deprives the government of funding to improve infrastructure, deliver basic services and ease poverty, AmCham said.

Another problem: "Public sector contracts can often be renegotiated or become controversial after a change of administration or department secretary or when a particular congressman or senator launches a publicity-generating investigation ‘in the aid of legislation’."

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AmCham’s most urgent concern is for new transportation (including roads and flyovers) and power infrastructure – the inadequacy of which raises the cost of doing business in this country.

The group is so worried about the deterioration in Filipinos’ English proficiency that it suggests sending out an SOS to the US government for qualified English teachers.

While the group notes that the President’s withdrawal from the 2004 race risked turning her into a lame duck, it said her move also made "continuous reform" possible instead of "lost opportunities" in her remaining months in power.

AmCham says its recommendations are also directed at the "over-exuberant media." Point taken.

As for the legislature, AmCham thinks the current Congress is the "least productive" in a decade. I don’t know if its observation will be noticed by most of our lawmakers. At 97 pages, the advocacy paper is no easy read for people whose daily reading does not go beyond the day’s headlines, or the clowns in Congress who go straight to the comics page (if they scan the papers at all).

Given a choice, such people will prefer to perish rather than reform. Unfortunately for the nation, these people are our policy makers.

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SUBSTANCE: Speaking of another American, National Security Adviser Roilo Golez told me it was Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of US forces in the Pacific, who had invited him to the Mandarin, where Fargo was billeted, for lunch last Thursday. When the Americans called to reconfirm the invitation, Golez said, they described the forthcoming lunch as a very "intimate" one.

"We talked solid substance as Fargo had lots of questions and observations about Balikatan 03-1, MILF, terrorism, etc.," Golez told me. "And having known each other for a long time, we were very frank and forthcoming."