Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Duterte's economic revolution is on the right track

These past few days made me re-think my assessment of the Duterte administration. For one, Mr. Duterte made several maverick moves which no other Philippine president ever did. And those moves are'nt for propaganda purposes, no. Those were honest moves meant for peace.

Imagine, after so many bloody years, a Philippine president invited the state's "official enemy", the Communists, into Malacanan for a dinner. And what's more important is that Mr. Duterte accepted the economic program being proposed by the CPP-NPA-NDF--one of several documents meant to improve the condition of the working and ordinary people.

The fact is, the CPP is open into considering a tactical alliance with the Duterte administration. I don't know the particulars but I have faith that this alliance would be anchored on just one proposition--the general welfare of the Filipino people.

Two things--industrialization and nationalisation of industries. There's another term which I loved to hear---land distribution. Land distribution is easily one of the most effective means towards improving the economic condition of the farmers. By giving them their own land to till, farmers and even non-farmers would want or would be more encouraged to go into full-time farming production.

However, lest we forget--for this to happen according to how we envision it, we need to demolish the current socio-economic and political structures in the provinces. For as long as these local economies are controlled by a few families, nothing positive will happen. These economies should be transformed and liberalised to encourage small entrepreneurs like our farmers to enter the markets themselves and contribute more towards nation-building.

There should be an economic revolution in the countrysides and it's effects would energize the urban centers of commerce. Imagine the opportunity of supplying thousands of farmers of tools for mechanisation and that of changing their farms into plantation type of operations--that would increase farming output and the effects of such a change would seriously impact on the national economy.

There's another proposition that this administration should consider and that is, a geographical review of the Philippines, an assessment of resources per island or per island group, and lumping them into economic regions or areas. Right now, our approach is really metro-centric---categorization of certain areas for development, and the strategy is radiating from Metro Manila.

The entire archiepelago should be categorized into certain economic areas: for example, Luzon could be the main industrial/agricultural complex while the Visayas could be divided into tourist/resource extraction/industrial-economic complex while in mindanao, a mix of agricultural production and industrial complex. Local and foreign investments should be encouraged to enter and develop these areas.

Of course, this is just first stage. The next stage should be nationalization of industries. And then slowly, we transform our economy into a socialist one, for the benefit of the many. This would take a while but the prospects of this happening within our lifetime is there, in the horizon.

It seems like this country would really be better under this administration. I hope this administration would stay the course, not just because staying means the correct political move, no.

This administration should commit itself towards this trend to provide the world a true, bloodless path for real and substantive change--that change towards socialism could happen without shedding too much blood and change on the basis of interacine conflict.




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