Migrante International's OFWs Oppose Economic Charter Change, FDIs While Demanding Jobs for Filipinos

Two days ago, Migrante International may have given me a migraine with their global petition. Migrante has branches where OFWs are working. Hypocritically, Migrante opposes FDIs while they get the advice of Irene Khan, a foreigner. Back on topic, I would like to share their petition from their own page, and man I do have a migraine reading it: 

“Our hard-earned foreign remittances prop up the indentured economy from total collapse yet the vultures in Malacañang and Congress are blind and deaf from our demands for government protection, services and decent jobs. Instead, they are hell bent on ensuring that they will continue to rule even after the six years limit imposed by the 1987 Constitution. Listening to the orders of their foreign masters, and political patrons, they want to further open the gates of the nation to be plundered by foreign monopolies, big mining firms, commercial loggers, and allow our lands, mines and resources to be pillaged by foreigners. That is why they want to change the 1987 Constitution that protects our patrimony and that imposes limits to stop tyrants and plunderers from overstaying in power. This is the so-called Cha Cha or Charter Change being proposed by Marcos Jr and his cousin Speaker Romualdez to amend the 1987 Constitution.

They also want to have a Cha Cha to allow the banned US Military Bases from returning, and to erase the Constitutional ban against nuclear plants and nuclear weapons and war crafts of foreign imperialist powers like the United States and China.

Even if they claim that the Cha Cha will only be limited to “economic” changes, it will allow the evil of the unbridled access by foreign monopolies on our land, natural resources, forests, mines and let them put up foreign enterprises that will further plunge our economy to the quagmire of underdevelopment. These foreign monopoly capitalists, with unlimited power and money will grab our lands and trample on the demand of farmers for genuine land reform. They will siphon off what little capital is being used by small and medium scale Filipino businesses, and bankrupt what remains of our native entrepreneurs and local employers. The result is the closure of Filipino business and factories, suppression of workers’ rights including wages, the landlessness of the farmers, massive joblessness, hunger and extreme poverty for our people which lead to forced migration.”

I'll probably need extra doses of Tylenol to get over this migraine. Just reading their statement against FDIs, while protesting in countries benefiting from FDIs, makes me laugh. I argued with the now-defunct Facebook page, Philippine Anti-Fascist League when they supported protests done by Anakbayan in Melbourne, Australia. I told them of their hypocrisy and one of the administrators only said that he can't take me seriously, that corporations are run by workers and not by the owners, and whatever nonsense they want to throw out. The more they insult me, the more I want to say, "Insults are the losers' tool to win the argument."

This proves the economic ignorance of Migrante. I could keep quoting quotes from the late Lee Kuan Yew. However, they're still probably clinging to the Flor Contemplacion narrative. There's the probability that uploading The Flor Contemplacion Story on YouTube by VIVA Films, has a political motive (read here). Rewatching the film, I can't help but write a review against it. I could keep reading LKY's quotes from his best-seller From Third World to First. These people will probably start singing Nora Aunor's "Kahit Konting Awa", translated to "Just a Little Pity", the theme song of The Flor Contemplacion Story, instead of listening to insights from LKY. These people probably view Singapore as an oppressive state that wrongfully put Flor to death. Flor was made a heroine despite the later evidence that she was guilty. The movie still sticks to the narrative that Flor is innocent, Flor was wrongfully accused, and any information about Singapore will be automatically dismissed. 

I wrote an article discussing why opening the Philippines won't create a foreign monopoly. How can there be a monopoly when monopoly is taken from the Greek words mono (single) and polein (seller). They say opening the Philippines to more FDI will lead to foreign monopoly, local businesses will be shut down, and the like. However, I'd like to give them a migraine by quoting LKY from his book From Third World to First: 

Pages 57-58

After several years of disheartening trial and error, we concluded that Singapore's best hope lay with the American multinational corporations (MNCs). When the Taiwanese and Hong Kong entrepreneurs came in the 1960s, they brought low technology such as textile and toy manufacturing, labor-intensive but not large-scale. American MNCs brought higher technology in large-scale operations, creating many jobs. They had weight and confidence. They believed that their government was going to stay in Southeast Asia and their businesses were safe from confiscation or war loss.

I gradually crystallized my thoughts and settled on a two-pronged strategy to overcome our disadvantages. The first was to leapfrog the region, as the Israelis had done. This idea sprang from a discussion I had with a UNDP expert who visited Singapore in 1962. In 1964, while on a tour of Africa, I met him again in Malawi. He described to me how the Israelis, faced with a more hostile environment than ours, had found a way around their difficulties by leaping over their Arab neighbors who boycotted them, to trade with Europe and America. Since our neighbors were out to reduce their ties with us, we had to link up with the developed world-America, Europe, and Japan-and attract their manufacturers to produce in Singapore and export their products to the developed countries.

The accepted wisdom of development economists at the time was that MNCs were exploiters of cheap land, labor, and raw materials. This "dependency school" of economists argued that MNCs continued the colonial pattern of exploitation that left the developing countries selling raw materials to and buying consumer goods from the advanced countries. MNCs controlled technology and consumer preferences and formed alliances with their host governments to exploit the people and keep them down. Third World leaders believed this theory of neocolonialist exploitation, but Keng Swee and I were not impressed. We had a real-life problem to solve and could not afford to be conscribed by any theory or dogma. Anyway, Singapore had no natural resources for MNCs to exploit. All it had were hard-working people, good basic infrastructure, and a government that was determined to be honest and competent. Our duty was to create a livelihood for 2 million Singaporeans. If MNCs could give our workers employment and teach them technical and engineering skills and management know-how, we should bring in the MNCs. 

Page 66

Our job was to plan the broad economic objectives and the target periods within which to achieve them. We reviewed these plans regularly and adjusted them as new realities changed the outlook. Infrastructure and the training and education of workers to meet the needs of employers had to be planned years in advance. We did not have a group of readymade entrepreneurs such as Hong Kong gained in the Chinese industrialists and bankers who came fleeing from Shanghai, Canton, and other cities when the communists took over. Had we waited for our traders to learn to be industrialists we would have starved. It is absurd for critics to suggest in the 1990s that had we grown our own entrepreneurs, we would have been less at the mercy of the rootless MNCs. Even with the experienced talent Hong Kong received in Chinese refugees, its manufacturing technology level is not in the same class as that of the MNCs in Singapore. 

Pages 68-69 

If I have to choose one word to explain why Singapore succeeded, it is confidence. This was what made foreign investors site their factories and refineries here. Within days of the oil crisis in October 1973, I decided to give a clear signal to the oil companies that we did not claim any special privilege over the stocks of oil they held in their Singapore refineries. If we blocked export from those stocks, we would have enough oil for our own consumption for two years, but we would have shown ourselves to be completely undependable. I met the CEOs or managing directors of all the oil refineries-Shell, Mobil, Esso, Singapore Petroleum, and British Petroleum on 10 November 1973. I assured them publicly that Singapore would share in any cuts they imposed on the rest of their customers, on the principle of equal misery. Their customers were in countries as far apart as Alaska, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand, besides those in the region.

This decision increased international confidence in the Singapore government, that it knew its long-term interest depended on being a reliable place for oil and other business. As a result, the oil industry confidently expanded into petrochemicals in the late 1970s. By the 1990s, with a total refining capacity of 1.2 million barrels per day, Singapore had become the world's third largest oil-refining center after Houston and Rotterdam, the third largest oil trading center after New York and London, and the largest fuel oil bunker market in volume terms. Singapore is also a major petrochemical producer. 

To overcome the natural doubts of investors from advanced countries over the quality of our workers, I had asked the Japanese, Germans, French, and Dutch to set up centers in Singapore with their own instructors to train technicians. Some centers were government-financed, others were jointly formed with such corporations as Philips, Rollei, and Tata. After 4 to 6 months of training, these workers, who were trained in a factory-like environment, became familiar with the work systems and cultures of the different nations and were desirable employees. These training institutes became useful points of reference for investors from these countries to check how our workers compared with theirs. They validated the standards of Singapore workers.  

For those Migrante members who are OFWs in first-world countries--I must wonder what their motives are. Those countries where they work are open to FDI. Here's a challenge that Migrante needs to do before they can be taken seriously. The irony is that these Migrante OFWs are staying in countries that benefited from FDIs. Can they cite a study from the economists where they're working as OFWs to prove their claims, instead of just the claims of the IBON Foundation? It would be challenging indeed. That's all before they challenge me not to cite Singapore as an example.