Voting for development AN OUTSIDERS VIEW Ken Fuller 05/18/2010

Voting for development

AN OUTSIDERS VIEW Ken Fuller 05/18/2010 Regular readers may wonder why, with a couple of exceptions which discussed the matter in the most general terms, this column was silent on the Philippine election campaign. Yes, there was the desire to avoid accusations of “meddling,” but it is also true that, despite all the mudslinging, this outsider found himself unable to work up much enthusiasm for the contest. The reason? As in the UK, there was so little fundamental difference between the main candidates, and no one campaigned — let alone organized — for real change. Last week’s column made the point that in the UK election, the three major parties were really engaged in a race to the bottom as, faced with a whopping public debt, the only difference between them lay in the extent to which they were prepared to cut public spending; not one of them talked about reversing the process by which the debt had been created.  If the UK’s debt has occurred because the country has, in losing its industrial base, also lost the ability to create the level of employment necessary to generate sufficient tax revenue, the Philippines’ own debt problems have occurred in part because this country never had an industrial base in the first place. And none of the four leading presidential candidates called for its creation – or, indeed, had anything to say about the fundamental economic questions facing the country.  To this outsider’s knowledge, only Jamby Madrigal (and possibly Eddie Villanueva) called for nationalist industrialization but, with no electoral machine to support her, she had no chance of winning. In any case, in order for nationalist industrialization to be on the agenda, rather more than an electoral machine would be required. True, it might look like an electoral machine, but it would be a national network of people committed to a cause rather than a personality, organized outside of an election campaign and with no thought of such matters until (is six years sufficient?) that cause had put down roots —not just geographically and organizationally, but also in the consciousness of the electorate. With a vigorous national movement for genuine economic development in place and in the running, an election would certainly be worth following.... MORE Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100518com5.html

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