PGMA's Speech during a Dialogue 'isang tanong, isang sagot' with the Civil Society Groups

Ateneo Professor's School Auditorium Rockwell Drive, Makati City (22 Nov. 2003)

Friends, ladies and gentlemen:

When your organizers invited me today, they said that you a me to speak about I want to be remembered for. I think that the best way to do this would be to speak on the experience I gained during my two in a half years of learning curve in the presidency. What I’ve learned about the deep changes in the system and the principled unity that need to be done if we are to bring our country to real political and social stability and real economic development.

While historically our economic development has been slow compared to our neighbors. I thank god that despite the difficulties we perceive in our country, during my administration as acknowledged by the APEC research secretariat we have been posting a growth rate that is number six over-all among the 21 economies of the Asia pacific!

In fact this year we are achieving our highest growth since the Asian crunch of 1997. That performance I believe no, not I believe, that performance as per our national income accounts, owed much to the increased activity in telecommunications and in retail. In telecommunications, I would like to think that one reason why it grew by leaps and bounds is partly that during my administration bandwith became cheaper and more accessible. And as far as retail is concerned, though we see a lot of negatives in the media, the growth of retail can only reflect positive consumer confidence, as I said, despite the negatives that are expressed so loudly. Incidentally, the structure of this growth jibes with what I said way back in my first state of the nation address in 2001, that the growth sectors of our future are in the service sector.

And I would like to believe that civil society shares in the accomplishments of my administration--people like Dinky, people like Ging, people like Vicky, they have been a central part of how we have done our strategic directions. And beneath the macroeconomic growth rate that I have pointed out, beneath the obvious leading sectors of the economy telecoms and retail, lie a number of things that we are able to do in terms of addressing governance, a preferential option for the poor, and the long-festering national divisions.

On the preferential option for the poor, notwithstanding that people complain about high prices, we have been able to keep the price of what we call wage goods stable -- the basic necessities bought by the poor, meaning regular milled rice, the fish of the common folk, especially tilapia, and the medicines commonly bought by the poor. For medicines bought by the poor lo, I believe we need deeper reforms so that we can really say that medicines bought by them are half the price of what we inherited in 2001.

We’ve been able to bring interest rates down, and small and medium enterprises have gobbled up the credit programs that we have designed for them. The stable prices of these wage goods reflect a low inflation rate, which together with the low interest rate and steady growth rate regime are a result of our macroeconomic market reforms, including keeping the budget deficit within manageable levels and improving fiscal performance through disciplined spending.

But my learning curve has taught me that we must reform the market more fundamentally to make it a market that creates enough jobs and opportunities for our vast and young population.

We must build the long term underpinnings of infrastructure, telecommunications, electric power, expanded credit and to be able to afford these, we must have deep fiscal reforms. We must broaden education to sharpen the intellectual competitiveness of our country.

I believe in investing in education reform, because I believe as I said ,way back again in my first state of the nation address, that the Philippines' greatest resource is the Filipino skill and the Filipino mind. And again I repeat what I said in my first state of the nation address about the growth sector of our future being in services. With education reform, it will be particularly in the human resource- intensive, skills intensive service sectors.

If we have been able to keep food for the poor stable in supply and in price, it is also because I believe to a large part of what my administration has done to modernize agriculture. We spend at least 20 billion pesos a year for agricultural modernization, that is an unprecedented allocation. Rice productivity has reached a new bounty with the propagation of hybrid rice, which has been doubling the harvest of farmers that they’ve used that hybrid rice. That hybrid rice can only grow well in irrigated areas and we have also the biggest irrigation program in history.

We've found new markets for tuna, carageenan, and tropical fruits. In fact general Victor Corpus, who is now the head of the Civil Relations Service of the Armed Forces believes that the massive propagation of carageenan in the coastal areas south of Manila --meaning Batangas, Bicol, Visayas, all the way to Mindanao will be an important answer to insurgency and secession. As a boost to agriculture, Secretary Marita Jimenez who is my Secretary for priority project in ODA has helped me to reduce the cost of food transport from Mindanao to Luzon by cutting the red tape to bring about what is call the roll-on roll-off ferry highway system. This is part of her general program to cut red tape to make sure crucial infrastructure are built.

But we must liberate the economy, the country with deeper reforms in agriculture, for it is where the keenest struggle for survival takes place. Pagkain sa bawat mesa, means not only the mesa of the people in the urban areas even the farmers themselves. No Filipino who works hard for family and country must be deprived of a decent meal.

Pagkain sa bawat mesa has always been to me if we were to have a battle cry that’s been my battle cry since my senate days. It’s a duty to every Filipino. A commitment that cannot be compromised no matter what. And we must put a real wealth in the hands of our farmers. We must empower the farmers by enabling them, empowering them to turn their farm land into credit-worthy assets, this is the principle of Hernando de Sotto the great Latin-American social scientist and this principle has been demonstrated successfully in many other developing countries. And they have also been applied now in countries that are doing even well , have been doing well like Thailand.

Hernando de Sotto, is a celebrated author of the principle of unlocking the mystery of capital that is locked in land. It is my inspiration for asset reform. If you want to know what deep reforms we have to make in land, I could give a separate lecture on Hernando de Sotto but I would just suggest for those who want to know please read Hernando de Sotto.

In so short a time of two in a half years of my administration also, again following that principle, we have accomplished one of the most massive housing programs undertaken by any administration. But we must do deeper reforms in our social assets, we call this asset reform and sometimes people tell me asset reform. And sometimes people tell me --asset reform please don’t talk about the heads of people even businessmen don’t understand asset reform . But I’ve got to explain it because it is so, you know it is so deep in our program of government. It is language used by Ging Deles. And what are we talking about assets ?--land, credit, minimum basic needs.

As far as land is concerned too, we have given an unprecedented number of the rural , ah, no, of the urban poor the right to buy the land they occupy. But to truly liberate the urban poor, we need deeper reforms than this. Hernando de Sotto has done this in a lot of Latin-American countries. He is doing it now in Thailand-- a whole comprehensive set of reforms in the titling system dedicated by that model and I have asked him to study particularly this system for our country.

Credit is an asset and part of our asset reform in credit is microfinance. We are providing microcredit to one million asset less rural women, and being praised for it by no less than the author of the Grameen bank model itself, Dr. Yunos of Bangladesh. But one million asset less, income less rural women, when we have maybe 25 million poor families? Oh no, poor people I mean, so but beyond that, we still have to do fiscal and banking reforms that we allow us to provide again Thailand is doing , because i study other successful models . Thailand in the last two years did a one-time seed fund of p1 million Baht in microfinance per village and it doubled the growth rate of Thailand in the last two years .

When Thaksin first started to do it, and everybody made fun of him "gimmick" sabi nila. But two years later, other countries like South Korea and the Philippines are trying to replicate it.

Our programs are what we’ve done within the present system but they must graduate into fundamental reforms. But we can only do this if we work hard enough on governance reforms. Through my two and a half years of the learning curve, i have learned the complexities of the bureaucracy. The world bank has praised our vigilant advances in fighting corruption it is acknowledged that we have been effective in our lifestyle checks and procurement reforms. The people's dissatisfaction about government services are also being addressed. There have been dramatic changes in the land transportation office, and I’ve been inspecting surprised visits . I’ve been doing surprised visits to police stations . But once and for all, we need deep reforms to end graft and we need to do that with the mighty hand of political will and a change of values among our citizenry.

Ending corruption is not done by St. Michael coming down and slaying the dragon with one’s well, one fells swoop of his sword. It is done by, it is like , corruption is like an infected wound that must be cured by constant healing and disinfecting. Systems changed combined with prosecution.

At the same time, we must use our fiscal reforms to have a better compensated civil service. That is the key to the graft-free civil service of Singapore and Hongkong. Aside from the values, they’re well paid but the... Reform doing that again is fiscal reforms.

It is also important, and I’m glad Dr. Abueva’s here to reform our system through constitutional change. We must begin a meaningful and dispassionate debate on changes in the constitution, particularly the parliamentary and federal form of government.

To strengthen our republic, we must make it more secure.

We need to reform our protective institutions because of the imperatives of peace and order, the war against terrorism, and the vision of a drug-free Philippines by 2005.

In my administration we increased the salaries of policemen and soldiers to make it the same level as the teachers, but we need to do deeper reforms in the military and the police, towards graft-free and dedicated organizations with the tools to enforce peace and order throughout the land, and to be true protectors of the people. The Feliciano commission which includes Father Bernas of Ateneo has given me its findings , their findings on the ongoing Philippine police reform recommission's work headed by Justice and ..Sedfrey Ordonez should be the basis of our military and police reforms.

I have said that we must do these reforms so that we can do justice to our most important resource and that is our world competitive , world-class human resources. This is a country of intelligent people. But why are we miserable? I believe it’s because we delight in the things that divide us more than the things that unite us.

There is too much negativism and conflict in our society and I attribute much of this to the social and political divisions that exist in our country today. And if we are going to make our reforms successful, we need to heal these deep divisions. While we must have justice, we must also have reconciliation. We must put a closure to our past national divisions. We must have permanent peace in Mindanao. We must end the communist insurgency. And one reason why Ging Deles is not here with us today because she is there in Oslo having exploratory talks with new people’s army.

The long-awaited judgment on the Marcos wealth has come down and that should help put martial law behind us. But most of all, and most difficult, I believe, for civil society, we must find a closure to the deep divisions between Edsa dos and Edsa tres. And in this most difficult reconciliation I will be guided by the great fathers of our church, including the theology of principled reconciliation as expounded by Father Romeo Intengan, the provincial head of the Jesuit community in the Philippines , who is himself a leading veteran of some of the great social movements of our country.

If we must survive, national unity and reconciliation are the resolution that is non-negotiable.

We must be relentless in its pursuit. No matter how impossible it looks.

Like Jesus Christ would not change his gospel no matter how many times he would be crucified and ridicule.

No fear, no resistance should distract us from our vision. Our nightmares should not distract us from our dreams.

And I hope that you leaders of civil society, young people who would be the leaders of our country’s 21st century , I hope that you can work with me in building prosperity for the greatest number of our people in a strong republic that we Filipinos dream of and rightly deserve.

Thank you very much.

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