The upside to the economic downturn

As with most events, there is an upside even to a recession. It is great to hear that more coaches will be bought by the government to carry the load of passengers opting for the MRT because of the cost of fuel. The price of fuel has finally forced car owners to abandon their cars and favor public transport. It does two things: save on fuel costs and protect the environment. These causes, especially protecting environment was difficult to promote because of the indifference of the public. There is another good coming out of the economic crisis but this requires a separate article — the democratization of infrastructure.

In the past attempts to convince the middle classes to take public transport have failed. The car was a status symbol — if you have it, you display it. But there were also practical reasons for avoiding public transport if all we had were rickety buses and reckless jeepney drivers.

These are clear signs of changing lifestyles not only here at home but also abroad. In the UK, newspapers report that the “middle classes have been priced out of private schools.” Private education fees have risen twice as fast as the retail price index. School fees increased by 6 percent last year — and a staggering 40 percent over five years. With the cost of food, fuel and mortgages all rising rapidly, parents on middle incomes are overstretched to be able to educate their children at these prices. The retail price index rose 18 percent in five years.

The middle classes, including doctors, lawyers and accountants who would otherwise spend, can no longer comfortably afford to give their children expensive private education. I know from British friends that the problem is that state education has not improved either. It has become impossible, they say with food and fuel bills rising to cope with rising school fees as well. All this can be turned to a positive development. The move from private to public education which has been happening in the Philippines in recent years even before the fuel crisis should spur government to reform our public schools.

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Neri’s dilemma. If I did not know Romulo Neri personally I might have gone along with his critics who oppose his appointment as SSS chief. But that would be most unfair. Mr. Neri is a capable public servant and reform minded. These are the same critics who were disappointed when he did not go along with their plan to overthrow the Arroyo government for being allegedly a “party to the ZTE deal.” The assumption is that they know what Neri and the President talked about and that if he were to reveal the information from that conversation it would nail down President GMA. They don’t know that either. These are mere presumptions on both counts. They do not know what they talked about and therefore neither can they decide whether it is good or bad because they do not have the evidence. The essence of executive privilege is precisely its confidentiality. If he has the right to assert executive privilege and he has chosen to use it then let it be. So to keep attacking him for making a decision to use his right is abusive.

Chief Justice Reynato Puno proposed a compromise whereby the Senate’s prerogative to question Neri can be upheld but at the same time allow him to call on executive privilege on certain questions. It was rejected by senators whose only notion of investigation is for the witness to agree with them. And if he did not agree with them he cannot be trusted with the SSS. Where is the logic? Yet that is the basis of the attacks against Neri.

The truth is that he has infuriated the opposition and self-appointed pillars of morality ­ — big business, the Church, media oligarchs etc. etc. Neri had every right to cite the confidentiality of his conversations with the President and he used that right. I know him to be both capable and reform-minded. I think it is more of the latter that his critics fear.

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I have said many times in this column that we have not paid enough attention to the geopolitics in our region. Like many others, I believe the ZTE mess has a lot to do with US-Chinese rivalry in the region. It would help us to understand current controversies better if we cast it against the perspective of how these have been influenced more by the concerns of outsiders.

One such influence is the current economic growth of China — and also of India and Russia — which have been quite impressive. The former Economist editor Bill Emmott refers to a World Bank analysis predicting that both China and India “could almost triple their economic output” in the next ten years or so. By the late 2020s, China could overtake the United States as the world’s biggest economy.

Exactly what is happening, and with what consequences, are matters of dispute. Some see great opportunities. Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, who wrote The Post-American World says his book is “not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else.” He argues that “the newly rich powers should be embedded quickly and snugly in international institutions such as the G8, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.” As for Filipinos, we must look for positive steps to deal with both America and China instead of fighting with each other on political issues that can only push us backward.