"Is the former Ombudsman obsessed with blaming the President?"
Former Ombudsman Conchita Morales-Carpio should have expressed her contention against the loan extended by the People’s Republic of China while she was still occupying the position as the country’s top graft buster. This explains why her observation of the economic assistance extended by China failed to capture the public mind. They could sense she is more obsessed in wanting to blame the President.
Her talk about the ongoing projects financed by China comes in bad taste. It is not much about the issue but more on her credibility. As the saying goes, the public has no sympathy for one who cries over spilled milk. She could have said it better when she was still the head of the Ombudsman.
Morales has mixed up her view of corruption with authoritarianism, that a corrupt government has a tendency to become an authoritarian government or that an authoritarian government is likely to end up a corrupt government.
She said: “We should be warned by a growing volume of evidence that suggests that capital emanating from authoritarian nations has a corrosive effect on democratic institutions and private enterprises in recipient institutions.”
The Ombudsman recited her usual opposition tirades against China’s infrastructure investment, for it has become the favorite target of US propaganda. But corruption has been with us since the US implanted its colonial flag in this country. The only thing novel about this issue is it has become their prime target, and the Filipino people could see the reason as goaded with her anti-China hysteria.
The issue of corruption can be recalibrated to what the US wants and not on what the people want to know. If corruption has no principal target, then most likely, the US is aiming for regime change. But in this particular instance, Morales has chosen an issue that could provoke the ire of the President.
Remember Duterte threatened to cancel the water concession given to the country’s top oligarchs. That unless they restore the water supply in Metro Manila, he will take drastic measures to rectify their misdeed. Duterte was referring to the two water concessionaires of MWSS, even implicating Senator Franklin Drilon, for preparing the contract that favored the two private concessionaires mixing up the status of Manila and Maynila Water Corporations with MWSS as to who stands as real suppliers/owner of water in the metropolis.
It was a simple case of water shortage that resulted in the excavation of the anomalous contract between the government of the previous administration and the concessionaires. Unfortunately, Morales slanted it in such a way to make the government appear the villain, although it did not revolve on a contract to supply water but to a contract to construct a dam to increase the supply of potable water in Metro Manila.
Morales totally forgot to mention that the Kaliwa Dam Project being undertaken by the Chinese contractors originated exactly on the same issue of corruption committed by the private concessionaires acting like cannibals to squeeze dry the consumers.
Yet, Morales purposely did not mention the murky past that MWSS went through because that would not help uplift the image of her patron who incidentally is acting as the godfather of the oligarchs lambasted by President Duterte.
The Philippines, right after it was colonized by the US at the turn of the century, was destined to end up as a borrowing state. It was a captive prisoner of modern imperialism. Its political leaders from its early years of independence have been conditioned to borrow from the US-created financial institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and the ADB. They serve to provide the facilities and guarantee to increase our financial credibility.
It was naive for Morales to say that the investment initiative of China is to advance its own geopolitical interest. Admittedly, the Belt and Road Initiative of China has its historical blueprint in the so-called Marshall Plan initiated by George C Marshall. The Plan had a dual purpose. First, to rehabilitate Europe after the Second World War. Second, to prevent Europe from being engulfed by the Soviet Union that then loomed across Eastern Europe.
The difference however between the US Marshall Plan from today’s Belt and Road Initiative of China is of the fact that the project is oriented towards development which residually means that countries from which the superhighway will traverse will bring about progress through trade. It is a win-win formula intended to benefit all countries.
The Marshall Plan on the other hand is a loan-oriented project. The purpose was to rehabilitate private industries in Europe. Public services were mostly funded but channeled through a select group of private corporations. It suffered from scarcity but as usual, it was the government that guaranteed the loan, and the borrowers were often slapped with high-interest rates.
Most ironic, the Marshall Plans rehabilitated Germany, Italy, Greece, and Turkey through massive economic assistance. But in Asia, the Philippines was left to fend for itself. Some were extended financial assistance for their back-pay claim of those who served during the war but the bulk was provided by Japan through their reparation’s assistance program.
Alongside the massive economic assistance was the plan to stabilize the world’s currency in what became known as the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1946. The idea paved the way for the elevation of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The value of gold was measured at $35 per ounce for the fact that the US holds three-fourth of the world’s supply of gold. Some say it was not really a transition from the gold standard for its value remained relatively the same.
As usual, Morales and many pro-American clappers were quick to give their prognostications of the BRI; that the Philippines could end up in a debt trap without an inkling that the country would be a borrowing client of the World Bank. The US has effectively chained us like those prisoners at Guantanamo. Some economists believe it is not for the money they want but the interest in the money. To this day, the Philippines remains deeply mired in debt paying the same debt we borrowed more than 30 years ago.
But then, the US economy was backed up by its own industrial output. The US stood as the real dynamo of world manufacturing as much as China is today. The US then nearly holds more than 70 percent of the world’s production, and invariably stood as the world’s greatest importer of raw materials.
Because of its involvement in unending war, its hard-earned wealth and resources were no sooner depleted. To recoup that lost wealth they squandered, the US abandoned the gold standard in favor of just measuring the value of its currency to its GDP.
What many economists do not know is that the shift in US monetary policy was a disguised formula towards de-industrialization. The Nixon formula of decoupling the US dollar from the gold standard was reinforced by Reagan, a firm believer of the monetarist policy advocated by Milton Friedman. There was, for a short time, a boom in the US economy, as much as currency recovery, is caused by the shift in US monetary policy by the realigning their currency to dollar.
