Safely home from a wonderful trip East, I’ve had time to think a bit about what my priorities would be to try to develop the place further. It is a wholly theoretical exercise, since winning power anywhere is a messy compromise between promoting a vision and getting elected, and then retaining a mandate. In Manila, that is truer than in most places with its crony politics. I’m also well aware that Europeans have spent much of history forcing their visions onto other cultures, with pretty dreadful results. Furthermore our European model looks pretty broken just now. Still, it passes the time.
Philippine politics is currently consumed by the reproductive health bill, bravely promoted by the president against strident opposition by the catholic church and other conservatives. While divorce and abortion are important, it does seem perverse to me that so much energy goes on a single issue, while the problems of poverty, overcrowding, economic weakness and corruption are so evident. Still, at least those issues matter more than the news story dominating the radio stations on Monday – that Paris Hilton had lost her mobile phone. The poor thing.
My campaign would focus on three issues – education, infrastructure and security.
Education is the biggest opportunity facing many developing countries. While health and other things clearly matter, education seems to me to give the best future return on investment. Currently, many of the best schools are run by the Church. They provide a decent education, but to a pitifully small share of the country’s young. The rest have to settle for woeful state-run schools, or for nothing at all. Of course, the Church schools charge fees, and apply other entry criteria to favour families who have existing status in society. These then feed similar universities.
This is similar to the problem of public schools in Britain, only on a much larger scale. There too, an infeasible share of Oxbridge undergraduates come from few, fee paying schools. Labour for years campaigned to close these schools down, on the grounds of fairness, and also with a belief that the elite would care more about state sponsored education if their own kids were not exempt from it. This has great merit, but it would be such a destructive waste.
The Philippines could afford this waste even less, so let us build on it. The Church could be encouraged to triple the number of such schools, while only marginally reducing resources allocated to existing ones. Then also greatly increase the number of available bursaries for poor kids, while also making life a bit tougher for the richer ones by raising entry standards – based on raw ability only. Finally, force universities to look to the state sector for most undergraduates, with a quota system for a time.
Even more important is to improve the quality of state schools. For sure, that would mean investment in infrastructure and teachers, but perhaps the private sector could help. The last link is to encourage parents to make their kids’ education a priority, and here, the existing government is laudably following the brilliant example of Brazil, where welfare hand outs for the poor have greatly increased, but with a string attached that children must attend school.
On infrastructure, I would be a bit of a communist planner. Plainly, what is missing is any long-term or joined-up thinking. Here is an example. We visited a friend in a recently opened condo unit. The unit was less 500 metres from a metro station, and the same from shops. We actually did walk from the metro, and what a walk! In the heat, we had to climb many staircases, cross busy roads, and finally walk right around the condo unit to reach its only entrance – placed round the back for reasons of security and parking. It is no surprise then that our friends have three cars, and use them to travel around the corner, thereby clogging the roads even more.
While money and personal convenience dictate everything, this will only get worse. Hence the only answer is some sort of grand Manila 2025 type scheme, with the future zoning and use of every square metre defined now and implemented gradually. Investment in public transport is critical, as are things like covered and air-conditioned walkways and proper bus stops. The scheme would have to address flood control, sewerage upgrades and of course road improvements too.
Massive investment in public-type housing would also be needed, as currently almost nothing exists between the luxury condo and the slum. Again, the private sector, Church, and imaginative finance can help. In Kuala Lumpur, I was always impressed by the lower-middle class housing being developed, in Manila I saw none. Then, many slums would need to be cleared up. Where to put these displaced people? Well, the new housing can help and so can an expansion of the city boundaries, as well as incentives to stop families moving from the countryside to Manila. But this would not be enough. Perhaps the Mexico solution would be required. There, a dense ring of shanty towns has developed around the city perimeter. They are hardly ideal, but at least it frees up the city itself, and the state has succeeded in making shanty living conditions almost bearable, and even created some property rights.
This will all take time and be expensive. One source of funds has to be taxing cars more, like in Singapore. It would not win me votes, but I would tax cars heavily for registration and use (fuel and tolls) and hit the SUV’s hardest. My friends and the next condo developers may otherwise need more than a covered walkway to change their habits.
The security policy would be all about professionalising the police and giving them legitimacy, and trying to get private security and guns off the streets. Mexico has tried this as well, which has involved taking on the drug barons. It would be ugly in Manila too. But a well-staffed, non-corrupt, police and judiciary is the only way to restore any control and get rid of guns, fences, and impunity for criminals. This will start with some investment, linked with some zero tolerance policies, including for police bribe-seeking. To his credit, the president has focused here, with some early successes, but it will require great backbone to stay the course. Part of this policy would be paid for by reducing spending on the armed forces. Sorry, the country has more important things to deal with than invading/defending the Spratleys.
So then, education, infrastructure and security. Dose this with promoting competition in business and honesty in tax paying, and you have a manifesto that might make a difference. Of course, there is no chance at all of this coming to pass. So, if you live in Manila, prepare for more guns and gridlock while the debate on birth controls continues. But you can console yourself that you have some of the best food and the best hospitality in the world, so you’ll probably still be smiling.
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