It’s the second week of April 2016, approximately three weeks before the Philippine national elections. Although the most recent SWS survey shows Duterte and Marcos taking sole lead in preferences for president and vice president respectively, the numbers are still very close. In other news, customers of Loyola plans have taken to social media to raise concerns about unpaid claims. Closer to home, my youngest reported that a professor of hers wished her luck finding a man who would be ok with the assumption that it wouldn’t always be the woman who stays home when a child is ill.
Across the country today, many people simply cannot move forward.
Leadership
It is thirty years since the first EDSA revolution, the one that unseated Ferdinand Marcos and paved the way for Corazon Aquino to take the presidency. With quite astonishing irony, the Pulse Asia survey taken during the week of the EDSA revolution 30th anniversary actually put the junior Marcos (tied with Escudero) in the lead in the vice presidential race.
The most recent SWS polls cover the period March 30 to April 12, a period that includes the day of the vice presidential debates (10 April), during which opponents focused not on the capabilities of Bongbong, the Marcos who is actually running, but rather on the sins of his deceased father.
In an interview following the debates, Liberal party vice presidential candidate Leni Robredo was asked about her reaction to the exhortation to stop looking back and to begin moving forward together. She prefaced her answer with a comment that there are special circumstances. Essentially, she argued that the Philippines is unique. Robredo, many news stories report, seems to believe that Bongbong Marcos must apologize for his father’s sins, insisting that a failure to apologize somehow means that the atrocities of the past can be repeated. Marcos counters with a comment that he cannot apologize for other people, he can only apologize for himself.
There are those who take the position that Robredo’s comments belittles the efforts of all of the legislators and policy makers who crafted laws and institutions in order to prevent precisely the horrors that Robredo refers to. But there are many who support her, especially because of whose widow she is.
Dynasties and dead relatives
It is an old theme in Philippine politics. As loudly as we proclaim that we must evaluate on merit and that we should eschew dynasties, we seem to gravitate to brothers, sons, daughters, and widows of dead politicians.
Liberal party standard bearer, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979, was pursuing a career as an investment banker in New York before he returned to the Philippines following the death of his brother, Capiz representative Gerry (Dinggoy) Roxas jr. in 1993. In a piece in Rappler, Bea Cupin reports “Dinggoy was being groomed to be the politician in the family, following the footsteps of their father, former senator Gerry Roxas and their grandfather, former president Manuel Roxas.”
Former frontrunner Grace Poe is the adopted daughter of Fernando Poe Jr., close friend of former president Joseph Estrada, who ran for president in 2004. Poe married husband Llamanzares, dual citizen of the US and the Philippines in 1991 and moved to the United States, giving birth to son Brian in the US in 1992 and daughters Hanna and Anika in the Philippines in 1998 and 2004. Poe’s family reportedly began to make arrangements to come home to the Philippines after her father died in 2004. Poe’s residency and citizenship continue to be questioned but the Supreme Court, in a highly controversial decision, ruled in her favor.
In the vice presidential race, all of the frontrunners have ties to politicians. Bongbong is the son of the much vilified former president Ferdinand Marcos. Escudero is the son of Salvador Escudero, former Sorsogon representative. Leni Robredo is the widow of Jesse Robredo, former mayor of Naga city, who was tragically killed in a plane crash in 2012. Alan Peter Cayetano is the son of the late Senator Rene Cayetano.
All of this begs the question: who are we really voting for? And also, why are we voting for them? Are we operating on the assumption that capability and character is carried in the genes? Or can be absorbed by osmosis?
As the many anti-Marcos voices point to the far past, and the anti-LP voices point to the recent past, what we all really need to decide is this: Who is best equipped to bring us to the future? And what can we live with?
Future
For the customers of Loyola plans, recent events have brought back the nightmares of previous pre-need company closures. We must remember that this is happening only 3 years after the failure of Prudentialife Plans in 2013. At the time, the number of pre-need companies had sunk to 20, from over 200 in the years prior to the Asian financial crisis.
Calls for increased vigilance had been sounded much earlier by many analysts. In fact, in 2008, the Actuarial Society of the Philippines had issued guidance in reaction to a circular from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which actuaries believed, could lead to substantially undervaluing pre-need liabilities. This was particularly worrisome in view of then recent changes in asset valuation methodology. Essentially, companies would have had the ability to take gains in their asset values without having to recognize the associated increases in liability values. This exacerbated the then regulatory practice of continuing to renew corporate licenses to sell new plans in spite of deficiencies in trust funds. The closures of many companies were not a surprise to the people who were reading the reports and following the numbers.
After 2013, the government acted to put safety measures in place to protect the public. As we watch events at Loyola plans unfold, this question will be asked: Could this have been prevented? And, more importantly, what recourse will the planholders have?
Forward
The reality, of course, is that Robredo is at least partly right. If we fail to learn, then we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. However, what those of us who care about the future need to think about is this: How much of our time should be spent on witch hunts and assigning blame? What is the real goal? Are we after apologies or change? Is all of this just politics as usual? At what point does taking the past into account simply become about holding on to baggage?
In a class where you are trying to teach students how their pre-conceptions affect their judgment, how ironic is it that your own pre-conceptions color your reaction to your student’s reality?
If we can only shine the light of reason on other people’s errors, and not on our own, how are we to move forward?
Readers can email Maya at integrations_manila@yahoo.com. Or visit her site at http://integrations.tumblr.com.