Sisyphus

It’s food. As we’ve said in a previous column, government is not entirely to blame. Food, or the lack of it, is a world-wide problem. Due to climate change, due to a shift to bio-fuels, and due to the cornering of the market by the nouveau-riche countries, worldwide food supply falls short of demand this year and perhaps for the next so many years. It’s not only rice. It’s corn, and wheat, soybean and other grains, on top of edible vegetable oils. But we were caught unprepared, and under the watch of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, government surrendered its prerogative to tame down population growth to the narrow-minded position of the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. Without enough forward-planning, both supply-side and demand-side, we are now faced with a food price crisis.

In 1997, when then Senator Arroyo thought she was "presidentiable", she launched her political party, Kabalikat ng Mamamayang Pilipino, or Kampi. And the lady senator’s political battle cry was "Pagkain sa bawa’t mesa", or "Food on every table".

Her political fortunes have since then allowed her to be at the helm of this country for the last seven and a half years. She is an economist by academic training, and was an instructor of economics in some of the country’s most prestigious institutions of learning. Neither her economic training nor her political acumen, it would now seem, has helped her achieve what she proclaimed was her goal, repeated several times over – food on every table.

Is it the curse of Sisyphus? Not upon her but upon the unfortunate people of the benighted land she unfortunately leads?

Remember the legend of the man who was punished by the gods for his deceitful ways and unbridled hubris, ordered to roll a huge boulder up a mountain, and each time he was about to reach the peak, the boulder rolled down the mountain, requiring him to repeat the back-breaking process once again and ever? Doomed to eternal frustration, just as our benighted land. Sisyphean has been our fate.

In the 1930’s we were the first country in Asia to have free elections, as a commonwealth under the American regime. We elected leaders like Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmeña Sr., as well as distinguished statesmen to our National Assembly. We had most of the institutions that make up for democratic governance. We were the envy of our neighbors, either because they were under corrupt monarchies or unflagging colonial masters yet. Then came the Pacific War, where the country became one of the most devastated nations in the world.

Right after liberation, America released us from its imperial hold, and we began the difficult process of reconstruction and early growth. Because of our strong educational system and our natural resources, coupled with visionary and rather competent leaders like Roxas, Quirino, Magsaysay and Garcia, we emerged, in short time, second only to a resurgent Japan. Then the people elected Diosdado Macapagal, who imposed decontrol upon an economy yet unprepared for free trade and an immediately devalued currency. Even at that, with strong leadership, we could have optimized our comparative advantage, maximized the use of our highly skilled and literate citizenry into an export market where we still had little competition.. But we did not do anything about the oligarchic, nay, monopolistic control of our vital industries. Furthermore, we allowed the wholesale destruction of our forests in order to earn much-needed foreign exchange. In the third year of the Macapagal administration, it was evident that our No. 2 vantage position in Asia’s economy was frittered away.

And then came Marcos, who came out strong and decisive at first, but his obsession to rule in perpetuity brought us nowhere. Still, when he declared martial law and imposed authoritarian order in 1972, many thought this was a necessary step forward. But the ways of corruption were habits that simply resurfaced in short time, and by the latter part of the decade, the bubble had clearly burst. What Lee Kuan Yew did to Singapore was lost to a Philippines under a corrupt leadership. To the Sisyphean fate it seemed we were doomed.

And Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, at a time when Marcos’ huge indebtedness was haunting his government like an albatross round its neck. Double-digit inflation was accompanied by a severe lack of foreign exchange, prompting him to declare a moratorium on payments. It was clear at the time the parliament of the streets was in ferment that the Marcos rule was in its death throes.

Cory Aquino’s rule ushered in a tremendous resurgence of hope and confidence. But the return of traditional politics via the constitutional order and successive if unsuccessful coup attempts were once again like a Sisyphean curse upon the nation.

In fairness, Fidel Ramos began instituting economic reforms coupled with a spate of amnesty proclamations that kept the political cauldron quiet. Investments had begun to pour in, but then again, in the middle of 1997, an economic flu that started in Bangkok triggered an economic recession across all of Asia. In truth, we were the least afflicted by the contagion, but then again because ours was not an overheated economy to begin with. Enter Joseph Estrada and his short-lived reign that was ended by Edsa Dos.

Once more, people thought that an economist by training with political pedigree was the right cure to our unending economic stagnation. But the curse of Sisyphus became all too apparent even in her first years. At the very least, many who participated in ousting an overwhelmingly elected Estrada thought that she could deliver on her promise of good governance. They were oh so wrong. Corruption worsened and in its wake, even our still fragile democratic institutions, ineffective as they were to promote even a modicum of equal opportunity, became terribly damaged, almost to the point of irreparability.

Cheating in the 2004 presidential elections followed by the unending orgy of lying and stealing exemplified by the botched ZTE-NBN deal and the recently exposed "baboy" scam simply drove us deeper into the cesspool of corruption.

Nonetheless, thanks to congressional imprimatur of higher taxes, the chronic fiscal deficits of the Arroyo government were checked, and economic growth, though benefiting only a few sectors of the economy, was something Arroyo could crow about, here and abroad. Coupled with a strong peso in part brought by a weakened dollar, and the ability of our financial managers to curb inflation, restiveness about corruption and illegitimacy were somewhat abated.

But poverty keeps rising, and the accessibility of basic services deteriorated, contributing further to the misery of the people, especially the D and E income brackets, which altogether comprise some 85 percent of the population.

Then Sisyphus’ boulder rolls down once more. Worldwide food production shortages that endanger even our ability to import enough of our basic grain requirements, coupled with the stratospheric rise in the price of petrol. Inflation this year will negate whatever gains Arroyo’s administration preens about. And there are no easy solutions in sight.

Often I have asked myself, surveying the dreadful landscape of the country’s social, political and economic future, why the benighted land seems to be cursed. Sometimes I ask myself why – when the Filipino race is among the most gentle in this world, with no history of any great crime against humanity, such as genocide. We have not even attempted to invade any land beyond our 7101 islands and islets.

Always, the only reason behind the seemingly accursed fate is that we have always had the misfortune of being led by the least of us. We chose unwisely, and in the few times in contemporary history when we chose well, fate intervened to end the good spell.

Now, in these times of unprecedented peril, we are yet led by one we did not even choose.