From Lying About the Marcos Years Parliamentary System to Marcos Years Economic Liberalization?

Manuel L. Quezon III"s Twitter Account

The first issue I've had is people saying on social media, "No to the parliamentary system because the first Marcos Administration was parliamentary!" It's really something because such people never bothered to do any further research. Please, knowledge isn't that expensive! Benigno Simeon "Ninoy" A. Aquino Jr. even stated, "We had a parliamentary form of government without a parliament." Later on, even Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr.'s own words showed that the Philippines was still presidential. Why would people still insist that it was a parliamentary form of government? Even more, I'm not surprised that some people are saying on Facebook, "Economic charter change is all about term extension." Even worse, it can be from the Philippine mass media. Sadly, the late Lee Kuan Yew was right to fall the Philippine press rambunctious in his book From Third World to First. I can refer the book to people all I want. However, some people are either saying, "Singapore is too small for the Philippines to learn from!". The more stupid one is sentimentalism over the late Flor Contemplacion's execution (read here).

Another lie I want to refute is that the first Marcos Administration was supposedly neoliberal. Neoliberal means: 

Neoliberalism is an economic model or philosophy that emphasizes that, in a free society, greater economic and social progress can be made when government regulation is minimized, government spending and taxes are reduced, and the government doesn't have strict control over the economy. Neoliberalism does not oppose all government intervention. However, it does wish to see it limited to only when it's necessary to support free markets and free enterprise.

That was the claim made by the IBON Foundation. It should be interesting that this claim can be found on IBON's website. Below is a picture made by IBON to present their data:

Click to enlarge

The claims of IBON are that Marcos supposedly opened up the Philippines to more foreign trade and investment in the 1970s. All the while, most countries (except Singapore) pursued self-industrialization. However, if one looks at the outcome of the Vietnam economy during the 1970s, one can see the negative consequence of it: 

SINCE REUNIFICATION IN 1975, the economy of Vietnam has been plagued by enormous difficulties in production, imbalances in supply and demand, inefficiencies in distribution and circulation, soaring inflation rates, and rising debt problems. Vietnam is one of the few countries in modern history to experience a sharp economic deterioration in a postwar reconstruction period. Its peacetime economy is one of the poorest in the world and has shown a negative to very slow growth in total national output as well as in agricultural and industrial production. Vietnam's gross domestic product ( GDP) in 1984 was valued at US$18.1 billion with a per capita income estimated to be between US$200 and US$300 per year. Reasons for this mediocre economic performance have included severe climatic conditions that afflicted agricultural crops, bureaucratic mismanagement, elimination of private ownership, extinction of entrepreneurial classes in the South, and military occupation of Cambodia (which resulted in a cutoff of much-needed international aid for reconstruction).

Even more, the UP School of Economics' very own Emmanuel S. De Dios reveals this, contradicting the claim from the IBON Foundation of Marcos being supposedly "neoliberal":

That argument might hold some plausibility if the economic record was brilliant to begin with. But it was not. And here one needs to underscore the importance of assessing the entire period of authoritarian rule, from late 1972 to early 1986.

Take gross domestic product (GDP) for instance: the average GDP growth rate from 1972 to 1985 (Marcos’s last full year) was all of 3.4% per annum. Per-capita GDP grew annually at less than 1% average over the period — more precisely 0.82%. Hardly a roaring-tiger performance. At that rate it would have taken 85 years for per capita income just to double.

For comparison, the average GDP growth from 2003 to 2014 — even under a bumbling and quarrelsome democracy — has been 5.4% per annum — with a rising trend. On a per capita basis, GDP today is rising 3.5% annually, more than four times the growth rate under the dictatorship.

The reason for the dismal performance under martial law is well understood. The economy suffered its worst post-war recession under the Marcos regime because of the huge debt hole it had dug, from which it could not get out. In fact, all of the “good times” the admirers of the regime fondly remember were built on a flimsy sand-mountain of debt that began to erode from around 1982, collapsing completely in 1984-1985 when the country could no longer pay its obligations, precipitating a debt crisis, loss of livelihood, extreme poverty, and ushering in two lost decades of development.

The economy’s record under Marcos is identical to that of a person who lives it up on credit briefly, becomes bankrupt, and then descends into extreme hardship indefinitely. It would then be foolish to say that person managed his affairs marvelously, citing as evidence the opulent lifestyle he enjoyed before the bankruptcy. But that is exactly what admirers of the Marcos regime are wont to do.

It is instructive that neither Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, nor any major Asian country catastrophically experienced negative growth in the early 1980s. The Philippines was the exception, following instead the example of protectionist and over-borrowed Latin American countries. This suggests that there was nothing unavoidable about the crisis the Philippines suffered, and that it was the result instead of failed policies. In 1977 the Philippines’ total debt was all of $8.2 billion. Only five years later, in 1982, this had risen to $24.4 billion. Thailand’s debt in 1982 was still only half that amount. Thailand and other countries of the region thus avoided a debt crisis and ultimately went on to attract foreign direct investments in export-oriented industries in the now-familiar East Asian pattern. But no such thing happened under Ferdinand E. Marcos, notwithstanding the arguments and exhortations of people like Gerardo P. Sicat (who would cease to be active in the regime by 1980). By the early 1980s, the pattern would be set where foreign direct investments in neighboring countries regularly outstripped those in the Philippines. (The intermittent coups d’etat post-Marcos did us no favors either.)

All this should correct the common misconception that the country’s troubles stemmed entirely from conjunctural “political factors,” notably that it was caused by ex-Senator Benigno “Ninoy” S. Aquino, Jr.’s assassination. One might not even entirely blame the mere fact of authoritarianism itself — after all Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia at the time were also ruled by despots of some sort or other, yet suffered no crisis. Rather the Philippine debacle was linked to the misguided policies that were structurally linked and specific to Marcos-style authoritarianism. For all its technocratic rhetoric and rationale, the Marcos regime never took economic reform, liberalization, and export-oriented industrialization seriously; it remained a heavily protectionist and preferential regime (think the cronies and the failed major industrial projects). The availability of easy loans was well suited to the priorities of a regime that thought it could stoke growth without deep reform and slake the greed of Marcos and his cronies at the same time. In the end a corrupt regime fell victim to its own hubris. 

In short, research from the UP School of Economics (hopefully Dr. Cielo Magno and Dr. Jan Carlos Punongbayan will see the beauty of economic charter change), shows the real problem. The first Marcos Administration never focused on badly needed economic reform, liberalization, and export-oriented industrialization. Instead, it remained protectionist and heavily preferential. How can one become an export-oriented economy if it just relies so much on self-industrialization, like the well-documented failure of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward? 

In contrast, China and Vietnam began opening up their economies to FDI. Deng Xiaoping began opening up to China to FDI (read here). The late Nguyen Duy Cong opened Vietnam to FDI (read here). China and Vietnam may have been ruled by dictators. However, both countries had better economics because they took on economic reform and liberalization. China and Vietnam are now exporting several products, even those that aren't locally produced. Some gadgets today are either made in China or made in Vietnam. Vietnam even has an Apple factory. When did the first Marcos administration ever make such wonders? In fact, I hear stories of inflation during the Martial Law Years. Take note that martial law isn't bad per se--the problem was its misuse and abuse during the first Marcos administration. The infamous Tiananmen Square Massacre happened a few years after the first EDSA Revolution. However, China still overtook the Philippines despite all that! 

To say Marcos used FDI to ruin the economy is confusing FDI with foreign loans (read here). A foreign investor doesn't lend money. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody said we owe the US money for every McDonald's branch here. Would the same person even say that Vietnam owes the Philippines money for the 150+ Jollibee branches there? Meanwhile, a foreign loan is when one country borrows money from an outside source. Marcos was trying to borrow money from Singapore, not get investors from Singapore. LKY knew he would never see the money again, knowing Marcos had a debt-driven economy. Some people say that opening the Philippines to FDIs will increase the debt. It's still sheer ignorance because FDI isn't the same as foreign debt! 

It doesn't take a doctorate in economics from the University of the Philippines (UP) or Ateneo De Manila University (ADMU) to understand that basic concept. Please, I just quoted from people better than me! Some people are still bound to use Ad Hominem to try to dismiss me, sticking to their comfort zone narratives. However, I'm still going to say my piece and remember this, "Insults are the losers' tool."