Destabilized

From mid-2015, investment and other business plans in the Philippines were put on hold to wait for the outcome of the 2016 general elections.

With Rodrigo Duterte receiving an overwhelming mandate, and then making the right noises about cutting red tape, leveling the playing field, being tough on crime and bringing peace and order, the business community looked forward to happy days ahead.

How rapidly optimism dissipates. Administration officials can put the most positive spin on recent events, and sycophants in the business community and other sectors can tell the increasingly naked emperor that he has such wonderful clothes. But the sooner the officials acknowledge that all is not well with the world, the better – for the nation, the government and the officials’ job security.

The officials can go by the survey numbers. Within a mere three months, President Duterte’s nationwide trust rating in polls taken by Pulse Asia slid from 91 percent in July to 86 in September. The number of those who distrusted him or were undecided about his trustworthiness also rose by 3 and 2.8 percent, respectively.

Du30 suffered the biggest drop in Metro Manila, home to a tenth of the nation’s population, from a dizzying 92 percent to 81, with the percentage of those who distrusted him also rising to six percent from zero when he assumed office.

If the slide continues at this rate, lawmakers – almost all of whom are not original Du30 allies, as he himself has pointed out – will soon smell blood and become emboldened to criticize him and block his initiatives.

* * *

Instead of hitting the ground running, armed with an overwhelming mandate, Du30 has gotten people running scared, and not just those in the crosshairs of his bloody drug war.

All but forgotten are the pluses in his early days: the peace initiatives with communists and Islamic separatists, the 10-point reform agenda that was welcomed by the business community, the promise to keep the government clean.

These days even Du30’s refusal to follow dress codes specified for events especially overseas is being seen as arrogance.

It’s unfortunate because immense popularity can work miracles in this country. Du30 should realize that a president’s popularity and public trust don’t stay stratospheric forever. He doesn’t have all that much time to implement the types of reforms that only a wildly popular president can force down the throats of notoriously ungovernable Pinoys.

A new administration should be taking advantage of the high optimism that traditionally marks changes of leadership in the Philippines. This is the time to announce to the world – traditional, new and prospective allies alike – that a new government is in place and the nation is open for business.

This is the time to welcome new investments and encourage expansion plans, all put on hold by the uncertainty that typically characterizes leadership changes in this country.

The need to attract investments becomes more urgent because Filipino migrant workers are starting to return home in droves after becoming casualties in weakening Middle East economies.

Instead here we are, in danger of losing new investments to more predictable (and business-friendlier) destinations in Asia including China.

One of our strongest sectors, business process outsourcing, is now rattled by Du30’s anti-American rants. Du30 has a great sense of humor, but his anti-American bias seems genuine and deep. It doesn’t matter if Filipinos generally remain pro-American, as surveys have shown. Several Americans have asked me, seriously, in recent weeks whether they should pack their bags and move perhaps to Cambodia or even Myanmar, or yes, to their former war arena Vietnam.

* * *

Du30 may imbibe some useful lessons during his stay in Japan. The only country that has suffered two nuclear attacks is now a treaty ally of the nation that sent the bombs. Japan is a strong, functioning democracy not because Uncle Sam dictated it but because the Japanese see it as the system best suited for their national interest.

Japan need not declare a “separation” from the United States in line with an “independent” foreign policy. Like America’s European allies, Japan (and democratic South Korea) has enough self-confidence and is sufficiently self-reliant to maintain an alliance with the world’s lone superpower without feeling that it is surrendering sovereignty. Tokyo chooses its allies based on shared values.

And any state that wants “independence” must be ready to develop self-reliance. The other day I visited two of the ships of the Japan Training Squadron, which is on a five-day goodwill visit in the Port of Manila – its last stop in a six-month cruise that covered Europe, Africa and South Asia before it returns to its home port in Yokosuka next month.

Japan, not China, has the most powerful and modern naval force in Asia. Tokyo doesn’t need to seek international arbitration to enforce its maritime territorial claims. Its democratic society has given its highly educated people free rein to innovate and produce cutting-edge products and services. You can’t expect Pokemon Go to be created in a state-repressed society.

Like other advanced economies, Japan developed efficient democratic institutions, installed a professional bureaucracy and strengthened the rule of law. The stability has allowed Japan to withstand periodic changes of leadership, with some of its prime ministers serving only for a few months.

* * *

The rule of law and strong institutions are factors missing in Latin America that helped create the narco state. This was noted by British journalist Ioan Grillo in “Gangster Warlords” – a book highly recommended by Du30.

So if Du30 is such a fan of this book, he may want to focus as much attention on institution building as in killing fellow Filipinos. So far he’s merely put the nation on a slippery slope of killing drug suspects, with guilt established through cardboard signs rather than by the courts.

Not that I can blame him, considering the rot in our judiciary. But if he wants lasting change, maybe he should send his shock troops to the homes of crooked magistrates instead of to the homes of the hampaslupa.

One day we’ll look back to this dark period in our humanity and wonder how looking gaunt and dazed – symptoms of hunger and malnourishment – became signs of a drug problem that has produced thousands of grieving widows, orphans, mothers in just four months.

Du30 can’t expect the nation’s allies in the free world to shrug off such deaths and keep quiet. But those reactions can be handled better; we are, after all, allies. He must not let his bellicosity destabilize his administration so early in the game.