Birth of Hope.

Chile’s Bachelet, My GMA & Access:
One-Word Theory of Development

08 March, International Women’s Day. YOU COUNT HOW MANY THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES HAVE LADY PRESIDENTS. I count how many First World countries have.

There appears much hope in the election of the first woman President of Chile, good-looking Michelle Bachelet. There appears much despair in the administration of the second woman President of the Philippines, small-but-terrible Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The two are related.

Chile and the Philippines are both very conservative societies, very Roman Catholic. They both suffered under dictatorships that drew much blood, Chile for 17 years under Augusto Pinochet and the Philippines for 19 years under Ferdinand Marcos. Pinochet was a brilliant General who mounted a coup against a constitutionally elected Salvador Allende; Marcos was a brilliant lawyer who mounted a constitutional coup against himself. They both succeeded in their ascent to power – that is, the people gave them the benefit of the doubt – on the promise of much better things to come. My historical verdict? Much better things to come.

Ascent. This time, Bachelet’s ascendancy is through the ballot, her winning by a plurality of 500,000 votes unquestioned. GMA’s ascendancy is, first, through People Power II, the second in the Philippines, the country that invented People Power, undoubted; then through the ballot, and her winning by a landslide of 2,000,000 votes continuing to be questioned and the legitimacy of her assuming office challenged. From the beginning of the election campaign, neither lady was a hands-down winner in the election; they both had to struggle to convert many a doubt into a yes. The ladies got what they wanted.

Statistically, those election figures are the same in significance. With about 9 million Chilean voters, her winning margin means Bachelet got a 5.6% total voter’s approval over and above that of her rival, Sebastian Piñera. It was the women’s vote. With about 36 million voters in the Philippines, her winning margin means GMA also got a 5.6% total voter’s approval over her rival, incredibly popular actor Fernando Poe Jr. It was the mixed Cebuano vote.

There are other similarities. Both countries have bicameral legislature. The President of each of the two countries is elected by popular vote. Bachelet was challenged by 3 male presidential candidates; GMA was challenged by 4 male presidential candidates. The would-be winners believed that the male was the superior of the species. Results? Male egos badly bruised.

That said, if you believe the mass media, there is much hope in Chile and there is much despair in the Philippines today. Chile used to be a shining hope of socialism; now it can dream again. The Philippines used to be a shining hope of democracy; now that dream is gone. (Painting by Norman Adams, Tate Collection 1966).

Hope and despair from parallel events: What is the Third World coming up to? Can we do something about it? If so, what? Now then, let us discuss in more detail:

(a) The euphoria accompanying the election of Chile's first woman President – The whole democratic world rejoiced, but especially the universe of women.

(b) The controversy accompanying the election of the Philippines’ second woman President – The universe of the opposition is agitated, but the whole country is bored.

(c) The problem accompanying all women presidents of their countries concerning development – After all the celebration, after all the counter-claims, the same big single question remains: Development?

(d) The promise accompanying my own one-word theory of development – ‘Simplify, simplify,’ wrote writer-thinker Henry David Thoreau when he was 28, learning from nature, daring to reduce the lesson of living into one word. Today, a different writer-thinker, I am not 28 but, learning from computer language, I too dare to simplify into one word, which in this case is the centuries-old concept of development: Access.

(A) EMPOWERED – CHILE'S 1^ST LADY PRESIDENT

In the presidential election in Chile in 11 December, Michelle Bachelet didn’t win. She didn’t lose either, but she got only 46% of the votes where a minimum of 50% of the total votes cast was needed to win. Sebastian Piñera, the closest rival, got 25%. That is why a run-off election was declared, scheduled for 15 January. The results: 53% of total votes cast went to Bachelet, 46% to Piñera, who had tried to consolidate the votes that went to the other male candidates in the first round. It meant that voters think better when the rules change.

Bachelet is a Socialist. Her victory over Capitalist (billionaire entrepreneur) Piñera is considered, by consensus, a clear sign of Chile's political shift from the right to the left, according to Agence France Presse, Associated Press, New York Times, United Press International, and the Washington Post. I believe the papers.

The new Chilean President is 54 years old. Her father was Alberto Bachelet, an Air Force Brigadier General who died under torture on 12 March 1974 in the hands of government agents as he remained opposed to the regime of military ruler Augusto Pinochet, who installed himself to power through a bloody power grab. Despite this sad experience, upon being sworn in as President, Michelle Bachelet appealed ‘for national unity to heal the divisions left by a military dictatorship that had imprisoned and tortured her and her parents’ among others (Moscow Times). She called for national unity, ‘after the divisions of the past.’ Only a Catholic President can have such a magnanimous heart! Remember Pope John Paul II forgiving his would-be assassin, the Muslim Mehmet Ali Agca? Theory of love in practice.

Bachelet has 3 children from 2 relationships; she is a divorcee. In Chile, she doesn’t have any problem with that because her country passed her divorce law in April 2004, one of the last countries to grant married couples ‘the right to divorce’ (BBC News, November 2004). I put the words in quotes because I don’t believe it is a right as fundamental as the right to life, liberty and security of person as according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adapted by the United Nations in 1948, not as basic as the right to vote. My country, the Philippines, does not recognize such a right, and I myself do not believe it contributes to the overall happiness index of the people. Divorce is solving the problem by changing the problem.

In the meantime there is jubilation. Monica Gonzalez reports (The Australian, 13 March) that ‘The street euphoria that greeted Bachelet’s victory felt very much like the emotions that gripped Santiago back in 1970, when Allende was elected.’ Santiago is the Chilean capital; Salvador Allende was the first Socialist President elected in Chile, and his election electrified the world. Some 36 years later, Chile has another Socialist President, and stimulates similar excitement. History repeats itself.

Allende and Bachelet are kindred in more ways than one. They both studied to become medical doctors; they both became the minister of health of Chile. Allende was ‘especially concerned with the social causes of ill-health’ (MSN Encyclopedia), and Bachelet would not be far behind in that. Allende had in mind what he called the Chilean Road to socialism via the democratic process, with elections and legislation, rather than a violent revolution. Bachelet has in mind her own Chilean Road, not necessarily different: ‘Equal development for all’ (11 March, Chilean Government Online). ‘Chile will be incomplete,’ she says, ‘if it does not develop in harmony with all its regions.’ She also says: ‘I made a commitment to the regions and I am going to follow through on it.’ It looks like Bachelet has defined for the Chileans what democracy can mean for them: equal development for all. And she means it.

As newly installed President, Bachelet has announced that she will (a) implement direct elections of regional authorities and (b) carry out a municipal reform, to allow and urge local authorities themselves to address the needs of their own communities. ‘We are going to work side-by-side with the Mayors, so that they can have more resources, facilities and tools to do their jobs well.’ This is going to be a President who will go from her exalted position down to the ground and work with the people she finds with soil at the tip of their fingers. A different working President.

According to Moscow Times, one of her first acts as President was to swear in a Cabinet of Equals (my coinage): 10 men and 10 women. She was fulfilling a campaign promise to have ‘equal numbers of men and women in decision-making posts.’ This is a lady who means what she says! She is reported to be ‘a strong woman’ (Monte Reel, Washington Post, 12 March). Ricardo Lagos himself knew; he made Michelle Bachelet Latin America’s first female defense minister in 2002. She also has plans to force political parties to include a set percentage of women in their electoral tickets. What the lady wants, the lady gets.

Bachelet is lucky to be the next President of her country after Lagos, another Socialist, who supported her in the election. He left office with a ‘comfortable budget surplus’ and extensive international trade relations, according to the Washington Post. He had the vision; he set the stage for Chile to reach developed-country status by 2010. With Pinochet as President, she had been unlucky. She was tortured, then forced into exile in Europe and Australia in 1975 and lived abroad with her mother for 4 years. They returned to Chile in 1979.

While President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who both attended Bachelet’s inauguration, have advocated economic independence from international capitalism (read: US), Bachelet and members of her team are ardent supporters of globalization, of the free-market policies that Chile has embraced for decades (Washington Post). Lagos had signed free-trade agreements with countries around the world, including the United States, who sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as George W Bush’s representative to the inauguration. He also sought significant increases in social spending for education and health care. Good for Chile.

What Chile needs now is a woman’s touch? Bachelet’s election is a watershed in Chilean history, and the people know it instinctively. Women sob as they watch her wave from a convertible. On her inauguration day, men scream, ‘We love you Michelle!’ Schoolgirls lean over barrier ropes to get a closer look at their new leader.

‘I’m sensing in the street a sort of revolution,’ says Marta Lagos, head of the polling firm Mori Chile, says Monte Reel (Washington Post).

I say there’s more to that, Marta & Monte: You are witness to The Birth of Hope.

(B) ENCUMBERED – THE PHILIPPINES' 2^ND LADY PRESIDENT

And in the Philippines, am I now witness to The Birth of Despair? No. The Birth of the Politics of Despair.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo first became President of her country when President Joseph Estrada was ousted in January 2001 by People Power II, the second bloodless coup by the Filipinos. Like People Power I, this one was hugely inspired by the Roman Catholic Church in the person of Jaime Cardinal Sin, extraordinarily beloved Archbishop of Manila. Estrada was impeached on charges of corruption. People Power II, as many as 1 million warm bodies, said in effect: Estrada is guilty as charged.

GMA succeeded herself as President of the Philippines when she won the 2004 elections. But she has since been haunted continually by the ghosts visited on her by those who continue to cast stones at her, grave charges of cheating in order to win, and of not having the moral ascendancy to continue to be the leader of her country because of corrupt relatives out of control. In the meantime, they seem to say, the whole country suffers from a curse that only her resignation or removal from office will exorcise. Witchcraft for a witch.

Since not a day passes that someone from the opposition and/or the mass media does not take potshots at GMA. I don’t read the papers; I don’t watch news on TV; I don’t listen to the radio.

Notwithstanding the bad news (the only news from the Philippines these days), I know GMA has quite a number of solid accomplishments; let me tell you about just 5 of them: (1) budget surpluses, (2) hybrid rice, (3) generation of jobs, (4) decongesting Manila & ‘decongesting progress,’ and (5) officially advocating an Internet revolution throughout the country. You don’t know what that means.

THREE MONTHLY BUDGET SURPLUSES were recorded in 2005. In April, the GMA government’s revenues exceeded expenditures by P 4.2 Bn (USEmbassy.state.gov/manila/). In May, the surplus was 3.3 Bn (FirstMetro.com.ph/). In August, the budget surplus was P 1.75 Bn (AseanFocus.com/). A budget surplus means there has been a higher tax collection rate. Higher tax collection is an indicator that more citizens have higher confidence in their government.

HYBRID RICE, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS SUPER-RICE. She has been greatly supportive of the growing of more hybrid rice throughout the country and less of the current varieties being grown. Hybrid rice can outyield commercial rice by 1 metric ton per hectare (C Marquez, 27 January, AsiaRice.org/). For the hybrid rice commercialization program of the Philippines, a Special Allotment Release Order dated 28 April released P 544 Mn in 2004. For 2005, the budget was P780 Mn; for 2007, the budget is targeted at P 2.5 Bn (20 January PNA, Asia.News.Yahoo.com/). It has been estimated that because of hybrid rice, the Philippines has saved US$23.25 Mn from rice importation (23 November, SeedQuest.com/). The growing of hybrid rice earned for the Philippines such credibility in January 2004 yet that other countries, including Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia, wanted to import seeds from these islands (inq7.net/).

DECONGESTING METRO MANILA AND ‘DECENTRALIZING PROGRESS’ – The Manila Times says it all: ‘overpopulated and overdeveloped’ – describing the greater Manila area (also GMA). GMA is composed of the Capital City of Manila and 16 neighboring cities and municipalities, including the once-Capital of the Philippines, Quezon City. This GMA is the political, economic, social and cultural center of the Philippines. So much power concentrated in so small a place – in the heads of the property owners and the power brokers, not necessarily the same. This GMA is also not such a clean place, environmentally. Too much garbage from too many people. Before GMA (the President), no President minded GMA (the residents) as much. GMA’s plans include railway and road projects as well as the establishment of new government centers out of GMA’s way. Those who oppose her come essentially from the greater Manila area, so the political war in the Philippines is in fact GMA versus GMA. I hope my GMA wins!

ADVOCATING AN INTERNET-BASED EDUCATION PARADIGM and supporting by budget its translation into reality. The Internet exploded worldwide sometime in 1991; I remember reading that in Time Magazine. 15 years later, we have a President who is into knowledge management, who understands the language of the Internet as a global tool for advancement, who wishes to make it available to the many thousands who can make a difference in the lives of the many millions. ‘Think globally, act locally.’ The Filipinos have been adjudged by the world as #1 in knowledge management, and GMA knows we should capitalize on that, maybe even starting at nursery school. How important is that? Very. Almost 40 years ago, the management guru himself, Peter Drucker said, ‘Knowledge, during the last few decades, has become the central capital, the cost center, and the crucial resource of the economy’ (The Age Of Discontinuity: Guidelines To Our Changing Society, Harper & Row, 1968). The guru had always been right.

GENERATION OF JOBS IS A TOP PRIORITY under GMA. I heard her Secretary of Agriculture talk about the importance of (her) being earnest in this matter in a conference in Mindanao. Now, this is a crucial issue because by encouraging labor-intensive farming, you are creating jobs – but you are also deconstructing agriculture. For higher production, you want to mechanize more of farming; for job creation, you want to manualize it at the same time, that is, you want more men working in the fields and fewer machines. In this case, to create more jobs means to uncreate or unwelcome more mechanical devices. It looks like you are a Luddite, you are anti-technology.

Overall, as she is into the generation of a million jobs, GMA is into one hell of a situation: Damn if you do, damn if you don’t.

(C) ENDANGERED – MY PREDICTION OF THE LADY PRESIDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENTS

19 March: 3^rd anniversary of the war for deliverance in Iraq. The armed struggle that goes on there compounds the unarmed struggle for development.

In other parts of the world and using another metaphor: In Chile, is it calm seas for Michelle Bachelet, and in the Philippines wild waters for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo? I say: Calm before the storm. Bachelet has just set sail; she is not in the high seas yet.

And what of the high seas? A superhighway for brigands, bandits, bloody bastards. They smuggle & snuggle, advocate & attack when they please and they are (almost) untouchable. All-male species? In the Philippines, a handful of them are female.

So, my prediction of the administration of Bachelet can be stated in two words: Stormy weather. Just like GMA’s today. The male of the species will not allow the female to dominate. It is the eternal battle of the sexes. Only one rule must prevail: The rule of the alpha male. It is not a battle of minds – if the alpha male is using his head and is more intelligent, he will not fight dirty.

And so I say: Michelle Bachelet, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, George W Bush, Tony Blair, Francois Mitterrand, Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro, Mahathir bin Mohamad, Lee Kuan Yew, the King of Brunei etc – they all have already failed to achieve what Bachelet dreams for Chile: ‘equal development for all.’ All these leaders of these great and near-great countries of the modern world want the best for their people. Ah, equal development, their greatest dream, shall equally be their greatest disappointment.

That is because equal development is an impossible dream, a brave new world that you can always see but never touch; it is St Thomas More’s Utopia, a perfect world. St Thomas wrote about this Paradise on Earth in his book Utopia, coining the word ‘utopia’ as a pun, meaning both ‘a good place’ and ‘a no place’ – and with his book, St Thomas set ‘to invoke the analogy between the great voyages of discovery and discoveries of the mind’ (OregonState.edu/). Thank you very much, Oregon State: Learning from that, I see that our leaders today, most if not all of them, are embarked on sea voyages of development, when in fact they should be sailing on voyages of the mind.

(D) EMPOWERING – MY ONE-WORD THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT

So I’m thinking of intellectual journeys.

Female or male, no leader of her or his country will succeed in bringing about ‘equal development for all’ – that is an idea that we can imagine but cannot attain. Initially, ‘equal development’ is desirable but since we find that it is not measurable or, which is the same, since we will never finish quarrelling about how to measure it, ultimately it is not desirable. In advocating ‘equal development,’ we are encouraging battles between the sexes, among family members, among villagers, between business owners and consumers, among the different geographical units of the country, among property owners, among workers – between you and me. Equal development is a bad dream that is sure to turn into a nightmare.

Yes, equality encumbers, not empowers. No, development has nothing to do with equality. Yes, development has something to do with the mind.

On 5 September 1943, Harvard University awarded Winston Churchill an honorary degree. In his acceptance speech, this great man spoke of a plan for an international language. What is memorable to me of what he said were these words he told those who would listen and innovate: ‘The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.’ That prediction is more than half a century old, and it has come true, but development has not. So I would like to revise Churchill and say, ‘The empires of the future are the empires of the mind – if they are for the people, of the people, by the people.’

Development is building empires of all minds. And that has something to do with opening doors or windows of opportunities to everyone.

And so we come to my (new) one-word theory of development: ACCESS. In three words, it is this: Development is access. In seven words: Development is access made open to all.

To explain, let us take the case of the Internet. Is the Internet open to all? Theoretically, yes. In the University Town where I live, we have about 50 Internet cafés; at the town center in my sleepy hometown 250 kilometers away, we have 5. If you have half a dollar, the World Wide Web is yours for your kind of exploring for a good 60 minutes. But the Internet is not available in all villages in the Philippines, not even in mine, and not all citizens are literate in English. Not only that. Who do I see are the frequent customers of Internet cafés? Game players. It makes me sad. They are not developing their minds in the best manner they can, and entrepreneurs are capitalizing on the game players’ mistake. Game Over again and again.

If you want the Internet to be the last mile of development, you have to make it accessible to all. And that’s a problem, because how do you make the Internet accessible in the backroads, assuming literacy, assuming seriousness of purpose? How do you bring electric power, how do you bring the desktop computer literally to the remotest and poorest villages without a gargantuan budget?

You don’t.

Access is the key, not infrastructure, not dial-up Internet, not Smart wireless Internet, not even a give-away Centrino laptop computer. You can bring your IBM ThinkPad to the top of the highest mountain in the Philippines, Mt Apo, and work there, but that’s not what I mean.

Access is like this: If Mohammed cannot go the mountain, bring the mountain to Mohammed!

Let me be personal and explain. I am a college graduate, Education major, University of the Philippines, 2.36 pt weighted average (not bad), and when it comes to the Internet, I know too much (not good). I visited my birthplace this mid-March for community work and stayed at my brother Emilio’s house (with his second wife Norma Antonio) in Sanchez, our village in Asingan, Pangasinan in Central Luzon, the Philippines. I was happy to be there, but unhappy that there is not a single Internet café to find in the village, and since I can’t afford a cheap Dell laptop myself, what was I to do? I wanted to work the whole night to finish this article for American Chronicle (13 electronic pages of notes singlespaced, 6 pages final); and so that I could visit longer, the next day and night I wanted to edit and desktop-publish the first complete draft of the August 2006 issue of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science (60 pages, with photos, graphs, tables). But I had no access to any computer. I was talent without device, skill without instrument, know-how without the wherewithal, knowledge without fulfillment. Very frustrating, wouldn’t you think?

There in my predicament you have the clue: Mohammed’s mountain is KNOWLEDGE. In the name of development, when I say ‘access,’ I mean access to knowledge, not necessarily access to the Internet uninterrupted, not necessarily access to the computer all the time.

Now, thinking over and above me, access is knowledge on capital, labor, management, software, hardware etc made available to the people. Development requires that knowledge be made available to all the literate people. And the illiterate? Access to knowledge means, initially, access to education, which is knowledge residing in another person, the literate.

So, the literate have access to knowledge, the illiterate to education – how does development take place?

My idea of development is propelled by entrepreneurship. And I’m thinking of family enterprises, acronym FE, which in Spanish means faith. Faith is #1 in the Filipino, probably also in the Chilean; remember, they are both traditional (Roman Catholic). Ah, faith; yes, my idea of development is based on my unquenchable faith in the Filipino, in the family.

For both divided Philippines and united Chile to develop to the fullest, to deliver ACCESS TO DEVELOPMENT FOR ALL, family enterprises must be encouraged socially, economically, politically, religiously. My idea of development includes the Church and the State separate and working together in the name of family. If they are not for family, what are they? If they cannot work together, what kind of society do we have?

Now, let me tell you what access to knowledge is not: It is not based on charity, doleouts, grants; while these are encouraged, they are not the key that unlocks the main door to development. Self-reliance is that key.

So, how does one access self-reliance?

Ladies & gentlemen, that is another question.