Migration-based growth, Marcos and the EDSA noble lie

Thursday, 24 February 2011 06:02

Written by Louie C. Montemar

The esteemed Gentleman from Ilocos Norte just had to put it that way and reveal to all that an Oxford education and Wharton School of Business degree are not any assurance of economic wisdom and political prudence. He has just been quoted as saying that had the Marcos dictatorship not been toppled by People Power, his father would have turned the Philippines into a Singapore. Political philosophers might call this a Noble Lie.

Western political philosophy invented the concept of the “Noble Lie”. The Greek Philosopher Plato argued that the masses in his imagined perfect place—“The Republic”—should be taught this Lie. This Grecian Noble Lie says that the masses are made merely from bronze and are therefore inferior to their rulers and rule enforcers who came from the womb of the earth like them, but are constituted by the far more desirable elements of gold or silver. With this “knowledge,” the intellectually unsophisticated masses are expected to accept the pecking order in the class divided society that is Plato's Republic. There’s the lie. As to its nobility… well… the Nobles need it. Today, we see the idea of the Noble Lie still at work in an even more subtle way. Consider the Marcos regime, the current one and the case of Philippine migrant labor and its role in national development.

A case study by California State University Associate Professor Kathleen Nadeau has succinctly pointed out how President Ferdinand Marcos recognized in the 1970's the then “new trend of migrants going to the Middle East as an opportunity to gain an additional source of revenues and capitalized on it by setting up an Overseas Employment Program that is still on-going.” She further underscored that under the Marcos regime “international labor opportunities and local economic insecurities and poverty created out-migration from the Philippines. The Philippine government’s strategy of placing its own citizens in jobs abroad to shore up its economy has been replicated and used by other economically depressed countries such as India and Thailand for the same purpose.”

Fast forward to the present. Consider the Omnibus Rules and Regulations Implementing the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 (Republic Act 8042). That national policy instrument clearly states the purported state view on labor creation and overseas work [underscoring mine]: “While recognizing the significant contribution of Filipino migrant workers to the national economy through their foreign exchange remittances, the State does not promote overseas employment as a means to sustain economic growth and achieve national development. The existence of the overseas employment program rests solely on the assurance that the dignity and fundamental human rights and freedoms of the Filipino citizens shall not, at any time, be compromised or violated. The State, therefore, shall continuously create local employment opportunities and promote the equitable distribution of wealth and the benefits of development.”

As it was under Marcos, the current government officially denies labor migration as a key growth strategy of the state. “The State does not promote overseas employment as a means to sustain economic growth and achieve national development”? That must be reason why we have a Philippine Overseas Employment Agency. That “state policy” must be the reason why we increased the budget of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas by P4 million for 2011 from its previous budget of only P45 million. That must be the reason why we officially set December as the month of overseas Filipinos.

“Overseas Filipino Workers” (OFWs) was officially adopted under the Ramos administration to refer to the millions working in other countries mainly out of a desire to earn better wages. Many of them used to be called domestic helpers or DH until someone thought of euphemistically referring to them as OCWs or overseas contract workers despite the fact that many of them actually had no contracts. Hence, OFW stuck. The OFW—the Bagong Bayani myth. Another face of the Noble Lie.

The State is not supposed to be promoting overseas employment as a means to sustain economic growth and achieve national development but it has even taken care to change labels for migrant Filipino workers. Moreover, government “honors” them by committing government's resources for their welfare, even those who have no contracts. Precisely under the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995, the government ostensibly enacted a framework to promote the welfare of OFWs and identified concrete programs to support them in their difficulties abroad.

Given their numbers and real contribution to GNP growth, it should not be surprising to note how government has been, to put it mildly, ambivalent on the harsher realities facing migrant labor. The Philippine Central Bank estimated the total 2010 remittance of overseas Filipinos to be US$18.76 billion, up by 8% from US$17.35 billion in 2009. How can one just wipe away that huge lump of honey?

Now, just out of curiosity, I looked at how much budget the government has been spending on the national agency that looks at the plight of overseas Filipinos and should be developing policy matters on their behalf. See this:

To see things clearly, let's turn this data to a graph:

See it? See how horse race policy making gets more national budget allocation than policy development for indigenous peoples, women, and overseas Filipinos? Indeed government appears to be understating the importance of overseas Filipinos, of OFWs in particular. Policy-wise, OFWs are treated as horses after all—prize-winning stallions that they are. And yes, I am being sarcastic.
It has been over a decade and a half since the passage of the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995, and four decades since Marcos' Overseas Employment Program which was supposed to be only a stop-gap mechanism to address local unemployment. What has government done?

Our government is still so far from crafting a meaningful and comprehensive development program that directly addresses the bare reality of Filipino migrant labor and its social costs. Nothing comes to mind more quickly than the plight of our OFWs to represent the travails of the Philippine economy and the enormity of the task of governing and looking after the welfare of millions of inhabitants, both inside and outside the archipelago. In the face of economic crisis and government inability to provide adequate protection all the time, OFWs indeed show their steadfastness by risking their family relations and lives in pursuit of decent wages. The government prefers to call them heroes for their effort to prop up the economy through the continued inflow of hard currencies. But they are, at best, reluctant heroes. Many of them leave their families behind—many come back to broken families.

Now that global media is giving a clearer face to our migrant Filipinos who are lined up in death rows abroad, and now that we feel the very real threat of volumes of Filipino migrants being displaced by political uprisings in other parts of the world, our national leadership should seize the moment to review and clarify our state policy on migrant labor in particular, and long-term national development, in general.

Western political philosophy invented the concept of the “Noble Lie” but it seems our leaders have tried to refine its application. The younger Marcos now wants to sell a lie about EDSA. Mister Senator, just look at where your father's labor migration model led us. We clearly are no Singapore because of it. Many of us are in Singapore because of it. Senator, didn't Oxford and Wharton introduce you to historical institutionalism and the notion of path dependence? In other words, following the trajectory of path dependent development, your father's “hidden policy approach” towards migrant labor continues to be reproduced in the current term. It is in this profound sense, among others, that the Marcos and Aquino terms are in fact intimately intertwined. You want us to believe you? Work with the executive to facilitate the creation of more jobs especially in our rural areas.

But if you insist on selling us this Noble Lie about EDSA, we wouldn't be surprised. After all, Marcos the elder had his story of the Maharlika. How apropos. The Noble Lie. Ang maharlikang kasinungalingan.

Tragically, national development, like the people's trust, cannot be sustained on a lie.

i Nadeau, Kathleen. “Out-migration from the Philippines with a focus on the middle-east: a case study,” downloaded from http://eapi.admu.edu.ph, February 2011.

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