This is clearly unconstitutional and violates proper understanding of international law. It essentially contains the same provisions of the MOA-AD, which the Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional (see ruling here). My take on the MOA-AD can be found in the following:
> Of the GRP-MILF MOA
> The MOA and of good intentions
> Mindanao: not peace at any price
> Of self-determination (again)
> ICJ rules on Mindanao
The full text of the Framework Agreement can be seen below.
= = = =
JOINT GPH-MILF DRAFT
In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful
FRAMEWORK AGREEMENT ON THE BANGSAMORO
The
Philippine Government (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) herein referred to as the Parties to this Agreement,
HAVE AGREED AND ACKNOWLEDGED AS FOLLOWS:
I. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE BANGSAMORO
1.
The Parties agree that the status quo is unacceptable and that the
Bangsamoro shall be established to replace the Autonomous Region in
Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The Bangsamoro is the new autonomous political
entity (NPE) referred to in the Decision Points of Principles as of
April 2012.
2. The government of the Bangsamoro shall have a ministerial form.
The
Parties agree to entrench an electoral system suitable to a ministerial
form of government. The electoral system shall allow democratic
participation, ensure accountability of public officers primarily to
their constituents and encourage formation of genuinely principled
political parties. The electoral system shall be contained in the
Bangsamoro Basic Law to be implemented through legislation enacted by
the Bangsamoro Government and correlated with national laws.
3.
The provinces, cities, municipalities, barangays and geographic areas
within its territory shall be the constituent units of the Bangsamoro.
The
authority to regulate on its own responsibility the affairs of the
constituent units is guaranteed within the limit of the Bangsamoro Basic
Law. The privileges already enjoyed by the local government units under
existing laws shall not be diminished unless otherwise altered,
modified or reformed for good governance pursuant to the provisions of
the Bangsamoro local government code.
4. The relationship of the Central Government with the Bangsamoro Government shall be asymmetric.
5.
The Parties recognize Bangsamoro identity. Those who at the time of
conquest and colonization were considered natives or original
inhabitants of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago and its adjacent
islands including Palawan, and their descendants whether of mixed or of
full blood shall have the right to identify themselves as Bangsamoro by
ascription or self-ascription.
Spouses and their descendants are
classified as Bangsamoro. The freedom of choice of other Indigenous
peoples shall be respected.
II. BASIC LAW
1. The Bangsamoro shall be governed by a Basic Law.
2. The provisions of the Bangsamoro Basic Law shall be consistent with all agreements of the Parties.
3. The Basic Law shall reflect the Bangsamoro system of life and meet internationally accepted standards of governance.
4. It shall be formulated by the Bangsamoro people and ratified by the qualified voters within its territory.
III. POWERS
1.
The Central Government will have reserved powers, the Bangsamoro
Government shall have its exclusive powers, and there will be concurrent
powers shared by the Central Government and the Bangsamoro Government.
The
Annex on Power Sharing, which includes the principles on
intergovernmental relations, shall form part of this Agreement and guide
the drafting of the Basic Law.
2. The Central Government shall have powers on:
a) Defense and external security
b) Foreign policy
c)
Common market and global trade, provided that the power to enter into
economic agreements already allowed under Republic Act No. 9054 shall be
transferred to the Bangsamoro
d) Coinage and monetary policy
e) Citizenship and naturalization
f) Postal service
This list is without prejudice to additional powers that may be agreed upon by the Parties.
3.
The Parties recognize the need to strengthen the Shari’ah courts and to
expand their jurisdiction over cases. The Bangsamoro shall have
competence over the Shari’ah justice system. The supremacy of Shari’ah
and its application shall only be to Muslims.
4. The Bangsamoro
Basic Law may provide for the power of the Bangsamoro Government to
accredit halal-certifying bodies in the Bangsamoro.
5. The Bangsamoro Basic Law shall provide for justice institutions in the Bangsamoro. This includes:
a)
The competence over the Shari’ah justice system, as well as the formal
institutionalization and operation of its functions, and the expansion
of the jurisdiction of the Shari’ah courts;
b) Measures to improve the workings of local civil courts, when necessary; and
c) Alternative dispute resolution systems.
6.
The customary rights and traditions of indigenous peoples shall be
taken into consideration in the formation of the Bangsamoro’s justice
system. This may include the recognition of indigenous processes as
alternative modes of dispute resolution.
IV. REVENUE GENERATION AND WEALTH SHARING
1. The parties agree that wealth creation (or revenue generation and sourcing) is important for the operation of the Bangsamoro.
2.
Consistent with the Bangsamoro Basic Law, the Bangsamoro will have the
power to create its own sources of revenues and to levy taxes, fees, and
charges, subject to limitations as may be mutually agreed upon by the
Parties. This power shall include the power to determine tax bases and
tax rates, guided by the principles of devolution of power,
equalization, equity, accountability, administrative simplicity,
harmonization, economic efficiency, and fiscal autonomy.
3. The
Bangsamoro will have the authority to receive grants and donations from
domestic and foreign sources, and block grants and subsidies from the
Central Government. Subject to acceptable credit worthiness, it shall
also have the authority to contract loans from domestic and foreign
lending institutions, except foreign and domestic loans requiring
sovereign guaranty, whether explicit or implicit, which would require
the approval of the Central Government.
4. The Bangsamoro shall
have a just and equitable share in the revenues generated through the
exploration, development or utilization of natural resources obtaining
in all the areas/territories, land or water, covered by and within the
jurisdiction of the Bangsamoro, in accordance with the formula agreed
upon by the Parties.
5. The Bangsamoro may create its own
auditing body and procedures for accountability over revenues and other
funds generated within or by the region from external sources. This
shall be without prejudice to the power, authority and duty of the
national Commission on Audit to examine, audit and settle all accounts
pertaining to the revenues and the use of funds and property owned and
held in trust by any government instrumentality, including GOCCs.
6.
The details of revenue and wealth sharing arrangements between the
Central Government and the Bangsamoro Government shall be agreed upon by
the Parties. The Annex on Wealth Sharing shall form part of this
Agreement.
7. There shall be an intergovernmental fiscal policy
board composed of representatives of the Bangsamoro and the Central
Government in order to address revenue imbalances and fluctuations in
regional financial needs and revenue-raising capacity. The Board shall
meet at least once in six (6) months to determine necessary fiscal
policy adjustments, subject to the principles of intergovernmental
relations mutually agreed upon by both Parties. Once full fiscal
autonomy has been achieved by the Bangsamoro then it may no longer be
necessary to have a representative from the Central Government to sit in
the Board. Fiscal autonomy shall mean generation and budgeting of the
Bangsamoro’s own sources of revenue, its share of the internal revenue
taxes and block grants and subsidies remitted to it by the central
government or any donor.
8. The Parties agree that sustainable
development is crucial in protecting and improving the quality of life
of the Bangsamoro people. To this end, the Bangsamoro shall develop a
comprehensive framework for sustainable development through the proper
conservation, utilization and development of natural resources. For
efficient coordination and assistance, the Bangsamoro legislative body
shall create, by law, an intergovernmental body composed of
representatives of the Bangsamoro and the Central Government, which
shall ensure the harmonization of environmental and developmental plans,
as well as formulate common environmental objectives.
V. TERRITORY
1. The core territory of the Bangsamoro shall be composed of:
(a)
the present geographical area of the ARMM; (b) the Municipalities of
Baloi, Munai, Nunungan, Pantar, Tagoloan and Tangkal in the province of
Lanao del Norte and all other barangays in the Municipalities of
Kabacan, Carmen, Aleosan, Pigkawayan, Pikit, and Midsayap that voted for
inclusion in the ARMM during the 2001 plebiscite; (c) the cities of
Cotabato and Isabela; and (d) all other contiguous areas where there is a
resolution of the local government unit or a petition of at least ten
percent (10%) of the qualified voters in the area asking for their
inclusion at least two months prior to the conduct of the ratification
of the Bangsamoro Basic Law and the process of delimitation of the
Bangsamoro as mentioned in the next paragraph.
2. The Parties
shall work together in order to ensure the widest acceptability of the
Bangsamoro Basic Law as drafted by the Transitory Commission and the
core areas mentioned in the previous paragraph, through a process of
popular ratification among all the Bangsamoro within the areas for their
adoption. An international third party monitoring team shall be present
to ensure that the process is free, fair, credible, legitimate and in
conformity with international standards.
3. Areas which are
contiguous and outside the core territory where there are substantial
populations of the Bangsamoro may opt anytime to be part of the
territory upon petition of at least ten percent (10%) of the residents
and approved by a majority of qualified voters in a plebiscite.
4. The disposition of internal and territorial waters shall be referred to in the Annexes on Wealth and Power Sharing.
5.
Territory refers to the land mass as well as the maritime, terrestrial,
fluvial and alluvial domains, and the aerial domain and the atmospheric
space above it. Governance shall be as agreed upon by the parties in
this agreement and in the sections on wealth and power sharing.
6. The Bangsamoro Basic Law shall recognize the collective democratic rights of the constituents in the Bangsamoro.
VI. BASIC RIGHTS
1.
In addition to basic rights already enjoyed, the following rights of
all citizens residing in the Bangsamoro bind the legislature, executive
and judiciary as directly enforceable law and are guaranteed:
a. Right to life and to inviolability of one’s person and dignity;
b. Right to freedom and expression of religion and beliefs;
c. Right to privacy;
d. Right to freedom of speech;
e. Right to express political opinion and pursue democratically political aspiration;
f. Right to seek constitutional change by peaceful and legitimate means;
g. Right of women to meaningful political participation, and protection from all forms of violence;
h. Right to freely choose one’s place of residence and the inviolability of the home;
i.
Right to equal opportunity and non-discrimination in social and
economic activity and the public service, regardless of class, creed,
disability, gender and ethnicity;
j. Right to establish cultural and religious associations;
k. Right to freedom from religious, ethnic and sectarian harassment; and
l. Right to redress of grievances and due process of law.
2.
Vested property rights shall be recognized and respected. With respect
to the legitimate grievances of the Bangsamoro people arising from any
unjust dispossession of their territorial and proprietary rights,
customary land tenure or their marginalization shall be acknowledged.
Whenever restoration is no longer possible, the Central Government and
the Government of the Bangsamoro shall take effective measures for
adequate reparation collectively beneficial to the Bangsamoro people in
such quality, quantity and status to be determined mutually.
3. Indigenous peoples’ rights shall be respected.
4.
The Central Government shall ensure the protection of the rights of the
Bangsamoro people residing outside the territory of the Bangsamoro and
undertake programs for the rehabilitation and development of their
communities. The Bangsamoro Government may provide assistance to their
communities to enhance their economic, social and cultural development.
VII. TRANSITION AND IMPLEMENTATION
1. The Parties agree to the need for a transition period and the institution of transitional mechanisms.
2.
The Parties agree to adopt and incorporate an Annex on Transitional
Arrangements and Modalities, which forms a part of this Framework
Agreement.
3. There shall be created a Transition Commission through an Executive Order and supported by Congressional Resolutions.
4. The functions of the Transition Commission are as follows:
a.
To work on the drafting of the Bangsamoro Basic Law with provisions
consistent with all agreements entered and that may be entered into by
the Parties;
b. To work on proposals to amend the Philippine
Constitution for the purpose of accommodating and entrenching in the
constitution the agreements of the Parties whenever necessary without
derogating from any prior peace agreements;
c. To coordinate whenever
necessary development programs in Bangsamoro communities in conjunction
with the MILF Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA), the Bangsamoro
Leadership and Management Institute (BLMI) and other agencies.
5.
The Transition Commission shall be composed of fifteen (15) members all
of whom are Bangsamoro. Seven (7) members shall be selected by the GPH
and eight (8) members, including the Chairman, shall be selected by the
MILF.
6. The Transition Commission will be independent from the
ARMM and other government agencies. The GPH shall allocate funds and
provide other resources for its effective operation. All other agencies
of government shall support the Transition Commission in the performance
of its tasks and responsibilities until it becomes functus oficio and
cease to exist.
7. The draft Bangsamoro Basic Law submitted by the Transition Commission shall be certified as an urgent bill by the President.
8.
Upon promulgation and ratification of the Basic Law, which provides for
the creation of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA), the ARMM is
deemed abolished.
9. All devolved authorities shall be vested in
the Bangsamoro Transition Authority during the interim period. The
ministerial form and Cabinet system of government shall commence once
the Bangsamoro Transition Authority is in place. The Bangsamoro
Transition Authority may reorganize the bureaucracy into institutions of
governance appropriate thereto.
10. The Bangsamoro Transition
Authority shall ensure that the continued functioning of government in
the area of autonomy is exercised pursuant to its mandate under the
Basic Law. The Bangsamoro Transition Authority will be immediately
replaced in 2016 upon the election and assumption of the members of the
Bangsamoro legislative assembly and the formation of the Bangsamoro
government.
11. There will be created a third party monitoring
team to be composed of international bodies, as well as domestic groups
to monitor the implementation of all agreements.
12. At the end
of the transition period, the GPH and MILF Peace Negotiating Panels,
together with the Malaysian Facilitator and the Third Party Monitoring
Team, shall convene a meeting to review, assess or evaluate the
implementation of all agreements and the progress of the transition. An
‘Exit Document’ officially terminating the peace negotiation may be
crafted and signed by both Parties if and only when all agreements have
been fully implemented.
13. The Negotiating Panel of both Parties
shall continue the negotiations until all issues are resolved and all
agreements implemented.
VIII. NORMALIZATION
1. The Parties
agree that normalization is vital to the peace process. It is through
normalization that communities can return to conditions where they can
achieve their desired quality of life, which includes the pursuit of
sustainable livelihoods and political participation within a peaceful
deliberative society.
2. The aim of normalization is to ensure
human security in the Bangsamoro. Normalization helps build a society
that is committed to basic human rights, where individuals are free from
fear of violence or crime and where long-held traditions and value
continue to be honored. Human insecurity embraces a wide range of issues
that would include violation of human and civil rights, social and
political injustice and impunity.
3. As a matter of principle, it
is essential that policing structure and arrangement are such that the
police service is professional and free from partisan political control.
The police system shall be civilian in character so that it is
effective and efficient in law enforcement, fair and impartial as well
as accountable under the law for its action, and responsible both to the
Central Government and the Bangsamoro Government, and to the
communities it serves.
4. An independent commission shall be
organized by the Parties to recommend appropriate policing within the
area. The commission shall be composed of representatives from the
parties and may invite local and international experts on law
enforcement to assist the commission in its work.
5. The MILF shall undertake a graduated program for decommissioning of its forces so that they are put beyond use.
6.
In a phased and gradual manner, all law enforcement functions shall be
transferred from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to the police
force for the Bangsamoro.
The Parties agree to continue
negotiations on the form, functions and relationship of the police force
of the Bangsamoro taking into consideration the results of the
independent review process mentioned in paragraph 4.
7. The Joint
Coordinating Committees on Cessation of Hostilities (JCCCH) as well as
the Ad hoc Joint Action Group (AHJAG) with the participation of the
International Monitoring Team (IMT) shall continue to monitor the
ceasefire agreement until the full decommissioning of the MILF forces.
These existing coordinating mechanisms shall be the basis for the
creation of a Joint Normalization Committee (JNC) to ensure the
coordination between the Government and remaining MILF forces, and
through which MILF shall assist in maintaining peace and order in the
area of the Bangsamoro until decommissioning shall have been fully
completed.
8. Both Parties commit to work in partnership for the
reduction and control of firearms in the area and the disbandment of
private armies and other armed groups.
9. The details of the
normalization process and timetables for decommissioning shall be in an
Annex on Normalization and shall form part of this Agreement.
10.
The Parties agree to intensify development efforts for rehabilitation,
reconstruction and development of the Bangsamoro, and institute programs
to address the needs of MILF combatants, internally displaced persons,
and poverty-stricken communities.
11. The Parties recognize the
need to attract multi-donor country support, assistance and pledges to
the normalization process. For this purpose, a Trust Fund shall be
established through which urgent support, recurrent and investment
budget cost will be released with efficiency, transparency and
accountability. The Parties agree to adopt criteria for eligible
financing schemes, such as, priority areas of capacity building,
institutional strengthening, impact programs to address imbalances in
development and infrastructures, and economic facilitation for return to
normal life affecting combatant and non-combatant elements of the MILF,
indigenous peoples, women, children, and internally displaced persons.
12.
The Parties agree to work out a program for transitional justice to
address the legitimate grievances of the Bangsamoro people, correct
historical injustices, and address human rights violations.
IX. MISCELLANEOUS
1. This Agreement shall not be implemented unilaterally.
2.
The Parties commit to work further on the details of the Framework
Agreement in the context of this document and complete a comprehensive
agreement by the end of the year.
6.10.12
Doha: dead and not liking it
is the subject of my Trade Tripper column in this Friday-Saturday issue of BusinessWorld:
Creeping behind the headlines of the Cybercrime Law, the RH Bill, of Cabinet appointments, controversies involving anti-narcotic officials, and all those emotional commentaries about the dark and absolutely anti-progressive days of martial law, news of Doha’s seemingly inevitable demise is relatively untold. That Doha is passing unmourned is ironic, particularly when one remembers what it was all about.
The Economist seems to have made the call already (“Goodbye Doha, hello Bali”; Sept. 8, 2012): “Instead of allowing the Doha round to be replaced with a patchwork of regional deals, the WTO’s boss, Pascal Lamy, should close it and resurrect the best bits in a ‘Global Recovery Round.’ He should drop the all-or-nothing ‘single undertaking’ rule that helped kill Doha. Instead, talks would be broken up into small chunks and allowed to progress independently of one another. Negotiations would be open, so that any member could leave or join. Some deals, therefore, would not include everyone.”
This, at first glance, seems like a good thing. But as readers of this column know, your Trade Tripper has never been a big supporter of FTAs for the Philippines. They are too trade distorting, skewed against the poorer countries, very complex arrangements that, with the expected and is happening “noodle bowl” effect, simply makes it impossible for developing countries’ bureaucracies to protect themselves from technical smuggling (let alone find ways to take advantage of FTA provisions). That is why it should be no surprise that, after 30 years of the AFTA’s effectivity, a relatively recent working ADBI paper (FTAs and Philippine Business: Evidence from Transport, Food, and Electronics Firms) found that only around 20% of the companies surveyed here in the Philippines have taken advantage of its preferential rates.
To let Doha go in favor of FTA’s is clearly a non-choice. As Columbia University’s Jagdish Bhagwati said in a New Delhi interview: “If we let Doha collapse, we will be overtaken by regional trade agreements and other bilateral arrangements, which will be discriminatory, where the weaker sections would not prosper and hegemonic powers like the Americans and Europeans would establish trade deals with smaller powers and would dominate trade in their own way, which is not possible in a multilateral system.”
Writing for Handelsblatt, Bhagwati goes on to name Doha’s killer: the United States. Or, more specifically, the Obama Administration. As he put it: “the US killed Doha. Or at least put into Intensive Care... it was killed by President Obama who had ironically been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by Norway in the expectation that he would promote multilateralism and turn his back on US unilateralism!” Unfortunately, “the US, not content with killing Doha, is even promoting the regional PTA called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, compounding its folly twice over. In the absence of MTNs like Doha, these PTAs will also become the arrangements where rules such as anti-dumping and subsidies codes will be set and will then be muscled into WTO at Geneva.”
But neither is a “Global Recovery Round” a welcome alternative. It merely shifts emphasis on developing country needs to assisting the world’s leading economies get back on their feet. It seems to be working on the quite convenient theory that the rich countries continued economic dominance is necessary for developing countries to prosper, which is fallacious.
Doha’s death thus presents two hits against developing countries. It comes at a time of, as reported by the WTO last September, “slowing global output growth [that] has led WTO economists to downgrade their 2012 forecast for world trade expansion to 2.5% from 3.7% and to scale back their 2013 estimate to 4.5% from 5.6%.” Furthermore, it must be remembered that the entire point of Doha was to ensure equality of opportunity for them after the lopsided Uruguay Round of agreements. Doha -- which is actually the Doha Development Round -- was launched with hopes of putting more poor country friendly provisions, particularly in relation to tariffs for industrial goods and the lowering of subsidies for agricultural products.
Unfortunately, the richer, developed countries have proven themselves to be not practicing as they preached. They repeatedly made demands that would ensure the Doha Round is not concluded successfully, which was in full display at the Cancun Ministerial when they attempted to include the Singapore issues over the huge objections of the developing countries.
Sadly, even WTO DG Pascal Lamy seems to have thrown in the towel as well: although there remains the clear need to help developing countries, “the nature of trade is changing. We are increasingly trading in tasks and in value-added and through value chains which are increasing in both breadth and in depth.”
No doubt the world’s events have overtaken Doha. But as things change, some remained the same. For purposes of giving confidence to developing countries and for developed countries to show their good faith moving forward, a successful conclusion to Doha would have still been a very good thing nevertheless.
Creeping behind the headlines of the Cybercrime Law, the RH Bill, of Cabinet appointments, controversies involving anti-narcotic officials, and all those emotional commentaries about the dark and absolutely anti-progressive days of martial law, news of Doha’s seemingly inevitable demise is relatively untold. That Doha is passing unmourned is ironic, particularly when one remembers what it was all about.
The Economist seems to have made the call already (“Goodbye Doha, hello Bali”; Sept. 8, 2012): “Instead of allowing the Doha round to be replaced with a patchwork of regional deals, the WTO’s boss, Pascal Lamy, should close it and resurrect the best bits in a ‘Global Recovery Round.’ He should drop the all-or-nothing ‘single undertaking’ rule that helped kill Doha. Instead, talks would be broken up into small chunks and allowed to progress independently of one another. Negotiations would be open, so that any member could leave or join. Some deals, therefore, would not include everyone.”
This, at first glance, seems like a good thing. But as readers of this column know, your Trade Tripper has never been a big supporter of FTAs for the Philippines. They are too trade distorting, skewed against the poorer countries, very complex arrangements that, with the expected and is happening “noodle bowl” effect, simply makes it impossible for developing countries’ bureaucracies to protect themselves from technical smuggling (let alone find ways to take advantage of FTA provisions). That is why it should be no surprise that, after 30 years of the AFTA’s effectivity, a relatively recent working ADBI paper (FTAs and Philippine Business: Evidence from Transport, Food, and Electronics Firms) found that only around 20% of the companies surveyed here in the Philippines have taken advantage of its preferential rates.
To let Doha go in favor of FTA’s is clearly a non-choice. As Columbia University’s Jagdish Bhagwati said in a New Delhi interview: “If we let Doha collapse, we will be overtaken by regional trade agreements and other bilateral arrangements, which will be discriminatory, where the weaker sections would not prosper and hegemonic powers like the Americans and Europeans would establish trade deals with smaller powers and would dominate trade in their own way, which is not possible in a multilateral system.”
Writing for Handelsblatt, Bhagwati goes on to name Doha’s killer: the United States. Or, more specifically, the Obama Administration. As he put it: “the US killed Doha. Or at least put into Intensive Care... it was killed by President Obama who had ironically been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by Norway in the expectation that he would promote multilateralism and turn his back on US unilateralism!” Unfortunately, “the US, not content with killing Doha, is even promoting the regional PTA called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, compounding its folly twice over. In the absence of MTNs like Doha, these PTAs will also become the arrangements where rules such as anti-dumping and subsidies codes will be set and will then be muscled into WTO at Geneva.”
But neither is a “Global Recovery Round” a welcome alternative. It merely shifts emphasis on developing country needs to assisting the world’s leading economies get back on their feet. It seems to be working on the quite convenient theory that the rich countries continued economic dominance is necessary for developing countries to prosper, which is fallacious.
Doha’s death thus presents two hits against developing countries. It comes at a time of, as reported by the WTO last September, “slowing global output growth [that] has led WTO economists to downgrade their 2012 forecast for world trade expansion to 2.5% from 3.7% and to scale back their 2013 estimate to 4.5% from 5.6%.” Furthermore, it must be remembered that the entire point of Doha was to ensure equality of opportunity for them after the lopsided Uruguay Round of agreements. Doha -- which is actually the Doha Development Round -- was launched with hopes of putting more poor country friendly provisions, particularly in relation to tariffs for industrial goods and the lowering of subsidies for agricultural products.
Unfortunately, the richer, developed countries have proven themselves to be not practicing as they preached. They repeatedly made demands that would ensure the Doha Round is not concluded successfully, which was in full display at the Cancun Ministerial when they attempted to include the Singapore issues over the huge objections of the developing countries.
Sadly, even WTO DG Pascal Lamy seems to have thrown in the towel as well: although there remains the clear need to help developing countries, “the nature of trade is changing. We are increasingly trading in tasks and in value-added and through value chains which are increasing in both breadth and in depth.”
No doubt the world’s events have overtaken Doha. But as things change, some remained the same. For purposes of giving confidence to developing countries and for developed countries to show their good faith moving forward, a successful conclusion to Doha would have still been a very good thing nevertheless.
29.9.12
Flying
is the subject of my Trade Tripper column in this Friday-Saturday issue of BusinessWorld:
One interesting aspect in this globalized world we have today is that the airline industry has, for some reason, been taken for granted. Perhaps to blame for it is its previous successes, whereby its very ubiquity have made people think nothing of its state and future, whether it be globally or even locally.
However, the airline industry is not exactly flying high these days (and, yes, I couldn’t resist the puns for this article, mea maxima culpa). Qantas, for one, has seen its profits dip. As reported by The Observer ("Airline industry faces grim year as Gulf carriers take over the world"; 17 June 2012), "Earlier this month, Qantas shares fell below A$1 for the first time since the carrier was privatized 17 years ago, following a profit warning blamed on a combination of hard-up Europeans cancelling their holidays and sharply rising fuel costs. Attempts to restructure the airline last year led to a dispute that saw the entire fleet grounded. Qantas’s biggest problem is the ever-more competitive environment."
But Qantas is not alone, as The Economist pointed out ("The American Airlines bankruptcy," 12 May 2012), "AMR Corp., the parent company of bankrupt American Airlines, announced that it will consider merging with another airline as part of a plan to emerge from bankruptcy. Most outside observers have expected this for some time -- United Airlines, which absorbed Continental, and Delta Air Lines, which merged with Northwest, are now significantly larger than American."
Competitiveness among the different airlines certainly has something to do with it. But the uncertainties in the global economy, along with insecurities in safety due to terrorists and other such problems, have contributed to increasing airplanes’ empty seats. As the WTO recently reported, "Slowing global output growth has led WTO economists to downgrade their 2012 forecast for world trade expansion to 2.5% from 3.7% and to scale back their 2013 estimate to 4.5% from 5.6%."
But assuming it’s true that the Philippine economy is poised for a take-off anytime soon (which, in no small part, is attributed to the Philippines’ young population; thus putting the lie for a need for an RH Bill), a significant part of that development will have to do with services and, specifically, tourism. As I wrote, however, previously ("A cloudy open skies," 20 January 2011), "Considerably, our tourism industry needs more than additional plane seats to get going: they need better airports and an efficient infrastructure. Both of which, we don’t really have. Such also needs careful and coordinated planning. None of which is being done effectively. We have a Category 2 rating from the International Civil Aviation Organization due to deficient aviation infrastructure and safety standards. All these are beyond the purview of local airlines. But they do fall squarely within the responsibility of the government. Traffic, peace and order, pollution, sanitation? These are not the responsibility of the local airlines. These are government’s. So why put the burden squarely on the shoulders of our airlines?"
And the need for emphasis in putting method and coordination for our air industry is highlighted by the fact that while Europe’s airline industry is not doing so well due to "rising tax regimes, inefficiencies in air traffic management, and the high cost of complying with poorly thought-out regulations," nevertheless, "IATA has also revised its forecast for Asian airlines’ profitability down from $2.3 billion to $2 billion, due mainly to weaknesses in the cargo industry." (The Economist, "The sick man of Europe," 11 June 2012)
IATA (International Air Transport Association) should know, what with its 60-year industry experience and a network that encompasses around 84% of total air traffic. It also assisted Oxford Economics in making the 2011 report "Economic Benefits from Air Transport in the Philippines". In it, the stakes are detailed on how important it is that we get our air industry right: "Improved connectivity gives Philippine-based businesses greater access to foreign markets, encouraging exports, and at the same time increases competition and choice in the home market from foreign-based producers. In this way, improved connectivity encourages firms to specialize in areas where they possess a comparative advantage. Where firms enjoy a comparative advantage, international trade provides the opportunity to better exploit economies of scale, driving down their costs and prices and thereby benefiting domestic consumers in the process. Opening domestic markets to foreign competitors can also be an important driver behind reducing unit production costs, either by forcing domestic firms to adopt best international practices in production and management methods or by encouraging innovation."
So while trade agreements and laws do matter, nevertheless, the little details matter more. St. Augustine was right: if you want to aim high, go deep and build better foundations. If we want our economic and tourism numbers to rise, our airplanes fly, we better take the time (as we’ve been saying for some time already) to see that matters on the ground are going right as well.
One interesting aspect in this globalized world we have today is that the airline industry has, for some reason, been taken for granted. Perhaps to blame for it is its previous successes, whereby its very ubiquity have made people think nothing of its state and future, whether it be globally or even locally.
However, the airline industry is not exactly flying high these days (and, yes, I couldn’t resist the puns for this article, mea maxima culpa). Qantas, for one, has seen its profits dip. As reported by The Observer ("Airline industry faces grim year as Gulf carriers take over the world"; 17 June 2012), "Earlier this month, Qantas shares fell below A$1 for the first time since the carrier was privatized 17 years ago, following a profit warning blamed on a combination of hard-up Europeans cancelling their holidays and sharply rising fuel costs. Attempts to restructure the airline last year led to a dispute that saw the entire fleet grounded. Qantas’s biggest problem is the ever-more competitive environment."
But Qantas is not alone, as The Economist pointed out ("The American Airlines bankruptcy," 12 May 2012), "AMR Corp., the parent company of bankrupt American Airlines, announced that it will consider merging with another airline as part of a plan to emerge from bankruptcy. Most outside observers have expected this for some time -- United Airlines, which absorbed Continental, and Delta Air Lines, which merged with Northwest, are now significantly larger than American."
Competitiveness among the different airlines certainly has something to do with it. But the uncertainties in the global economy, along with insecurities in safety due to terrorists and other such problems, have contributed to increasing airplanes’ empty seats. As the WTO recently reported, "Slowing global output growth has led WTO economists to downgrade their 2012 forecast for world trade expansion to 2.5% from 3.7% and to scale back their 2013 estimate to 4.5% from 5.6%."
But assuming it’s true that the Philippine economy is poised for a take-off anytime soon (which, in no small part, is attributed to the Philippines’ young population; thus putting the lie for a need for an RH Bill), a significant part of that development will have to do with services and, specifically, tourism. As I wrote, however, previously ("A cloudy open skies," 20 January 2011), "Considerably, our tourism industry needs more than additional plane seats to get going: they need better airports and an efficient infrastructure. Both of which, we don’t really have. Such also needs careful and coordinated planning. None of which is being done effectively. We have a Category 2 rating from the International Civil Aviation Organization due to deficient aviation infrastructure and safety standards. All these are beyond the purview of local airlines. But they do fall squarely within the responsibility of the government. Traffic, peace and order, pollution, sanitation? These are not the responsibility of the local airlines. These are government’s. So why put the burden squarely on the shoulders of our airlines?"
And the need for emphasis in putting method and coordination for our air industry is highlighted by the fact that while Europe’s airline industry is not doing so well due to "rising tax regimes, inefficiencies in air traffic management, and the high cost of complying with poorly thought-out regulations," nevertheless, "IATA has also revised its forecast for Asian airlines’ profitability down from $2.3 billion to $2 billion, due mainly to weaknesses in the cargo industry." (The Economist, "The sick man of Europe," 11 June 2012)
IATA (International Air Transport Association) should know, what with its 60-year industry experience and a network that encompasses around 84% of total air traffic. It also assisted Oxford Economics in making the 2011 report "Economic Benefits from Air Transport in the Philippines". In it, the stakes are detailed on how important it is that we get our air industry right: "Improved connectivity gives Philippine-based businesses greater access to foreign markets, encouraging exports, and at the same time increases competition and choice in the home market from foreign-based producers. In this way, improved connectivity encourages firms to specialize in areas where they possess a comparative advantage. Where firms enjoy a comparative advantage, international trade provides the opportunity to better exploit economies of scale, driving down their costs and prices and thereby benefiting domestic consumers in the process. Opening domestic markets to foreign competitors can also be an important driver behind reducing unit production costs, either by forcing domestic firms to adopt best international practices in production and management methods or by encouraging innovation."
So while trade agreements and laws do matter, nevertheless, the little details matter more. St. Augustine was right: if you want to aim high, go deep and build better foundations. If we want our economic and tourism numbers to rise, our airplanes fly, we better take the time (as we’ve been saying for some time already) to see that matters on the ground are going right as well.
24.9.12
Again, Fr. Bernas is mistaken. Same with Fr. Aquino
By this article Fr. Joaquin Bernas (and those from whom he gets his advice) is again sadly
mistaken. It is very evident that he compartmentalizes his reasoning, distinguishing the theological, philosophical, and constitutional points from each other. This is wrong. The arguments are actually unified and
one. They are all constitutional arguments (and philosophical, and
theological). The fact that he can't seem to see that is unfortunate.
His arguments on taxation, the nature of legislation, and the application of natural law are also myopic and, at times, quite fallacious.
Ultimately, how one understands the law, the nature of law, the nature of rights, and the nature of human beings would be determinative of how one ultimately views constitutional law. Though there would be occasions to properly discuss 'pluralism' and 'tolerance', there is still that point when one has to make a consideration of what is the objective standard (or else admit the lack of one) in determining what is constitutional or not and what what is right from wrong.
Far from helping achieve clarity on the issue, Fr. Bernas, I am grieved to say, continues to feed confusion to it.
I still stand on my previous comments on the issue, noting that Fr. Bernas has said nothing new that would give me cause to revise it. For a further exposition on natural law and how contraception violates it, see Catholic Sexual Ethics: A Summary, Explanation & Defense.
Lamentably, Fr, Ranhilio Aquino, also seems to not "get" natural law (see The Trouble With Natural Law). One can point to so many reasons why this is so. Suffice to say, however, that the fact that he does not seem to grasp that the very authority he mentions (i.e., John Finnis) is actually quite clear on his position that contraception violates natural law (see "Every Marital Act Ought To Be Open to New Life': Toward a Clearer Understanding"; co-written by John Finnis with Germain Grisez and William May) points to his inadequate depth on the matter.
Cutting through all the things he says, the logical consequence of his argument is that by denying contraception's contradiction to natural law, then the Catholic Church's stand on the matter is merely a theological eccentricity on its part, not based on reason. Which is completely opposite that of what the Church is saying about the 'reasonableness' of its teaching, a quite interesting position for a priest to take.
Having said that, here's another excellent (albeit, ironically, from a lay person) discussion on why contraception is a violation of natural law (see Contraception: Why not? by Dr. Janet Smith).
His arguments on taxation, the nature of legislation, and the application of natural law are also myopic and, at times, quite fallacious.
Ultimately, how one understands the law, the nature of law, the nature of rights, and the nature of human beings would be determinative of how one ultimately views constitutional law. Though there would be occasions to properly discuss 'pluralism' and 'tolerance', there is still that point when one has to make a consideration of what is the objective standard (or else admit the lack of one) in determining what is constitutional or not and what what is right from wrong.
Far from helping achieve clarity on the issue, Fr. Bernas, I am grieved to say, continues to feed confusion to it.
I still stand on my previous comments on the issue, noting that Fr. Bernas has said nothing new that would give me cause to revise it. For a further exposition on natural law and how contraception violates it, see Catholic Sexual Ethics: A Summary, Explanation & Defense.
Lamentably, Fr, Ranhilio Aquino, also seems to not "get" natural law (see The Trouble With Natural Law). One can point to so many reasons why this is so. Suffice to say, however, that the fact that he does not seem to grasp that the very authority he mentions (i.e., John Finnis) is actually quite clear on his position that contraception violates natural law (see "Every Marital Act Ought To Be Open to New Life': Toward a Clearer Understanding"; co-written by John Finnis with Germain Grisez and William May) points to his inadequate depth on the matter.
Cutting through all the things he says, the logical consequence of his argument is that by denying contraception's contradiction to natural law, then the Catholic Church's stand on the matter is merely a theological eccentricity on its part, not based on reason. Which is completely opposite that of what the Church is saying about the 'reasonableness' of its teaching, a quite interesting position for a priest to take.
Having said that, here's another excellent (albeit, ironically, from a lay person) discussion on why contraception is a violation of natural law (see Contraception: Why not? by Dr. Janet Smith).
23.9.12
Tolerance and reciprocity
Brilliant article by Professor Anthony Esolen on the nature of 'tolerance' (as well as 'pluralism'). Good reference and framework within which to argue on the merits of contraception, as well as divorce and same-sex marriage.
* * *
(The article was first published in Public Discourse and is by Anthony Esolen, Professor of English at Providence College in Providence Rhode Island, and the author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child and Ironies of Faith. He has translated Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata and Dante’s The Divine Comedy.)
Tolerance of wrong-doing is freely given; it is an act of graciousness, and not the paying of a debt. Therefore it rests with the offender, at the very least, to refrain from aggravating the burden of tolerance.
Thomas Aquinas, practical fellow that he was, understood that not all bad things can feasibly be proscribed by human law. It isn’t because people disagree about what is bad, but rather that a well-governed polity should require few laws, easily promulgated and understood, broadly promoting the common good, wherein the lawgiver can attend to things that are obviously within his scope of competence. Custom and the ordinary interchanges between human beings must take care of the rest. Since human beings are wayward—since they suffer the ills of pride, envy, avarice, lust, and the other deadlies—we will always require the modest virtue of tolerance to get through a day without knocking one another about the head.
The root meaning of the word suggests what the virtue involves. The Latin tol- is related to a group of words having to do with carrying a burden: German dulden, to be patient, to endure; Old English tholian, to suffer; Latin tuli, I have borne. When we tolerate we bear with someone or something; we bear the existence of a wrong. We do so because, given the circumstances, to protest would invite a greater wrong. There is a time for public correction, and a time for quiet endurance and, if the opportunity arises, private correction.
I should like to distinguish tolerance from an even more modest virtue, one without a name; it is part civility, part equanimity, part humility. It is sometimes called “pluralism,” but that isn’t quite right. We acknowledge that no one person can ever grasp the whole of the human condition, or the common good in its fullness. We are fallible, first of all; but we are also endowed with a variety of interests and talents. So we welcome a certain freedom of action, within the bounds of common courtesy and the moral law. One man works on cars in his spare time, another plants grapevines, another reads philosophy. It is to our general benefit that this should be so. But in these cases there is nothing really to tolerate. Tolerance properly understood always suggests the bearing of some trouble, or even of moral wrong.
What’s not so often acknowledged is that tolerance implies reciprocity from the person whose behavior is tolerated. For tolerance of wrongdoing is freely given; it is an act of graciousness, and not the paying of a debt. Therefore it rests with the offender, at the very least, to refrain from aggravating the burden of tolerance.
Suppose my neighbor has left his wife for another woman. It’s not against the law, although perhaps it should be. But it is a wrong. He can complain all day about how exasperating his wife is, but that won’t change the fact that he is breaking a vow, and doing his part to undermine the fundamental institution of society. I like my neighbor, poor man. He’s on the brink of a nervous breakdown. His mother is very ill. For these and other reasons I decide to tolerate his behavior. I am not going to take him to the woodshed. But I’m not going to give him my approval, either.
No matter whether my tolerance in this case is prudent or only timid, it demands reciprocity from my neighbor. He will refrain from bringing the new woman to my house, to meet my wife and children. He will refrain from lounging with her in his front yard, in affectionate embrace. He will refrain from publicizing the adultery. He will certainly not celebrate it.
The discretion he must practice is, as it were, tolerance’s doppelganger. I tolerate his vice; he “tolerates” my tolerance, and owes it to me to do so. Another example. The local convenience store sells Playboy magazine. They are legally permitted to sell it. But it is a wrong; it degrades the beauty of the human body and turns sexuality from its proper sphere in marriage to the private quest for gratification. If they tacitly request tolerance, they tacitly incur a debt of reciprocity. They will keep the offensive magazine out of sight.
The reader will note that the two examples above have to do with sex. They needn’t have; the principle remains. Suppose my auto mechanic accepts cash from his customers, giving them a break on their expenses, with the understanding that the money changes hands under the table, beyond the ken of the tax man. I know that it is dishonest to sign a tax form with a false declaration of income. He knows it too, because he himself would never hire a contractor who signed his name to false expense accounts. I pay him by check, and do not turn him in. I tolerate the evil. Now suppose he were to run for public office, on a platform of fiscal reform. That would be to heap another burden upon my back. It would make a mockery of tolerance itself.
And yet, because of the great leeway the law allows to sexual rather than financial relations, and because of the vagaries of human desire, behavior that touches upon our sexual nature will offer plenty of opportunities for tolerance—and for the reciprocity that tolerance is owed.
I am the father of a twelve-year-old boy. I want my son to be comfortable being a boy. I want him to grow up to be attracted to women, and to be attractive to them in turn. I want him to have natural, matter-of-course friendships with other men; not the suffocating touchy-needy relationships that stunt a boy’s maturity. I want him to walk and talk and work and play and fight and laugh like the man I see developing within him. I want him to love the beauty and grace and wisdom of girls and women, and to see himself as perfecting them and being perfected by them. I hope he will marry a good woman and raise happy children, who will look like him and his wife, and maybe a little like me and my wife. It’s perfectly natural for me to want this. It’s what fathers have always wanted for their sons.
Therefore it is natural that I should want no one to lay a snare in the boy’s path. Adolescence comes with a maelstrom of new feelings: frustration with still being so young, fear that one is already too old, longing for some indefinite thing of beauty, curiosity regarding good things that are mysterious, and bad things that seem so; no one can chart a map for every adolescent child. Adolescents are, then, peculiarly vulnerable. We owe it to them to make their passage as healthy and easy as possible.
All right, then. I understand there are men who have not attained the healthy masculine nature I hope my son will attain. I don’t make fun of them. I don’t wish them ill. I count some among my friends. I extend to them my tolerance of a state that is at least a significant falling-short of a natural good. But it requires pretty serious reciprocity. For one, the rights of my son should be respected. No snares in his path, thank you. He should not have to suffer, by suggestion or invitation or public example or enticement or moral sophistry, any complication along his way to becoming a healthy man, able to love a woman in a healthy way. Mr. Madison and Mr. Unger live in the same apartment: they are roommates. The history teacher, Mr. Delvecchio, is 40 and unmarried. Well, some people are confirmed bachelors. And indeed they may be. The freedom-clearing presumption of normality ought to obtain.
It follows too that if the public parading of a wrong is an offense against tolerance, so is the public declaration of a propensity to engage in the wrong. Every person alive is beset by temptations. We may utter them to our confessors, or, less often, to our best friends on condition of secrecy, or to our spouses, when it would not cause needless pain. Beyond that, we assist the tolerance of our neighbors by keeping our serpents to ourselves.
If a married man says, “I’m attracted to your daughter, but be assured I’ll never act upon my attraction,” he has at a stroke made it impossible for you ever to see him and your daughter in the same room without the shadow crossing your mind. He has, in his false and hypocritical show of honesty, loaded a heavy burden of decision upon you. Sever your friendship, and the self-hugging candid fellow can soothe himself by saying, “It was he who turned away from me.”
There are things we are better off not knowing about. But there’s more. The man who parades his temptation may be seeking approval. “Look at me! I am tempted to do things with another man that God and nature never intended. But I’m not going to do them. Aren’t I to be congratulated?” No, not a bit. If a man said, “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to open fire upon a bus full of professionals. Oh, I’ll never do it, but just imagine the blood,” we’d rightly consider reporting him to the police. And then it is a small step from approving the brave fellow who makes his temptation conspicuous and conspicuously averts the sin, to suggesting that perhaps the sin isn’t really so bad after all, if such a conspicuously virtuous fellow is tempted by it.
That too is an offense against tolerance. It is to make one’s neighbor always aware of his tolerance: to weary him with it, to pester him little by little into giving in, because it is so much easier to condone than to tolerate. So it is that the most intolerant among us frequently preach about tolerance—to nag their opponents into submission, and to get their way.
* * *
(The article was first published in Public Discourse and is by Anthony Esolen, Professor of English at Providence College in Providence Rhode Island, and the author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child and Ironies of Faith. He has translated Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata and Dante’s The Divine Comedy.)
Tolerance of wrong-doing is freely given; it is an act of graciousness, and not the paying of a debt. Therefore it rests with the offender, at the very least, to refrain from aggravating the burden of tolerance.
Thomas Aquinas, practical fellow that he was, understood that not all bad things can feasibly be proscribed by human law. It isn’t because people disagree about what is bad, but rather that a well-governed polity should require few laws, easily promulgated and understood, broadly promoting the common good, wherein the lawgiver can attend to things that are obviously within his scope of competence. Custom and the ordinary interchanges between human beings must take care of the rest. Since human beings are wayward—since they suffer the ills of pride, envy, avarice, lust, and the other deadlies—we will always require the modest virtue of tolerance to get through a day without knocking one another about the head.
The root meaning of the word suggests what the virtue involves. The Latin tol- is related to a group of words having to do with carrying a burden: German dulden, to be patient, to endure; Old English tholian, to suffer; Latin tuli, I have borne. When we tolerate we bear with someone or something; we bear the existence of a wrong. We do so because, given the circumstances, to protest would invite a greater wrong. There is a time for public correction, and a time for quiet endurance and, if the opportunity arises, private correction.
I should like to distinguish tolerance from an even more modest virtue, one without a name; it is part civility, part equanimity, part humility. It is sometimes called “pluralism,” but that isn’t quite right. We acknowledge that no one person can ever grasp the whole of the human condition, or the common good in its fullness. We are fallible, first of all; but we are also endowed with a variety of interests and talents. So we welcome a certain freedom of action, within the bounds of common courtesy and the moral law. One man works on cars in his spare time, another plants grapevines, another reads philosophy. It is to our general benefit that this should be so. But in these cases there is nothing really to tolerate. Tolerance properly understood always suggests the bearing of some trouble, or even of moral wrong.
What’s not so often acknowledged is that tolerance implies reciprocity from the person whose behavior is tolerated. For tolerance of wrongdoing is freely given; it is an act of graciousness, and not the paying of a debt. Therefore it rests with the offender, at the very least, to refrain from aggravating the burden of tolerance.
Suppose my neighbor has left his wife for another woman. It’s not against the law, although perhaps it should be. But it is a wrong. He can complain all day about how exasperating his wife is, but that won’t change the fact that he is breaking a vow, and doing his part to undermine the fundamental institution of society. I like my neighbor, poor man. He’s on the brink of a nervous breakdown. His mother is very ill. For these and other reasons I decide to tolerate his behavior. I am not going to take him to the woodshed. But I’m not going to give him my approval, either.
No matter whether my tolerance in this case is prudent or only timid, it demands reciprocity from my neighbor. He will refrain from bringing the new woman to my house, to meet my wife and children. He will refrain from lounging with her in his front yard, in affectionate embrace. He will refrain from publicizing the adultery. He will certainly not celebrate it.
The discretion he must practice is, as it were, tolerance’s doppelganger. I tolerate his vice; he “tolerates” my tolerance, and owes it to me to do so. Another example. The local convenience store sells Playboy magazine. They are legally permitted to sell it. But it is a wrong; it degrades the beauty of the human body and turns sexuality from its proper sphere in marriage to the private quest for gratification. If they tacitly request tolerance, they tacitly incur a debt of reciprocity. They will keep the offensive magazine out of sight.
The reader will note that the two examples above have to do with sex. They needn’t have; the principle remains. Suppose my auto mechanic accepts cash from his customers, giving them a break on their expenses, with the understanding that the money changes hands under the table, beyond the ken of the tax man. I know that it is dishonest to sign a tax form with a false declaration of income. He knows it too, because he himself would never hire a contractor who signed his name to false expense accounts. I pay him by check, and do not turn him in. I tolerate the evil. Now suppose he were to run for public office, on a platform of fiscal reform. That would be to heap another burden upon my back. It would make a mockery of tolerance itself.
And yet, because of the great leeway the law allows to sexual rather than financial relations, and because of the vagaries of human desire, behavior that touches upon our sexual nature will offer plenty of opportunities for tolerance—and for the reciprocity that tolerance is owed.
I am the father of a twelve-year-old boy. I want my son to be comfortable being a boy. I want him to grow up to be attracted to women, and to be attractive to them in turn. I want him to have natural, matter-of-course friendships with other men; not the suffocating touchy-needy relationships that stunt a boy’s maturity. I want him to walk and talk and work and play and fight and laugh like the man I see developing within him. I want him to love the beauty and grace and wisdom of girls and women, and to see himself as perfecting them and being perfected by them. I hope he will marry a good woman and raise happy children, who will look like him and his wife, and maybe a little like me and my wife. It’s perfectly natural for me to want this. It’s what fathers have always wanted for their sons.
Therefore it is natural that I should want no one to lay a snare in the boy’s path. Adolescence comes with a maelstrom of new feelings: frustration with still being so young, fear that one is already too old, longing for some indefinite thing of beauty, curiosity regarding good things that are mysterious, and bad things that seem so; no one can chart a map for every adolescent child. Adolescents are, then, peculiarly vulnerable. We owe it to them to make their passage as healthy and easy as possible.
All right, then. I understand there are men who have not attained the healthy masculine nature I hope my son will attain. I don’t make fun of them. I don’t wish them ill. I count some among my friends. I extend to them my tolerance of a state that is at least a significant falling-short of a natural good. But it requires pretty serious reciprocity. For one, the rights of my son should be respected. No snares in his path, thank you. He should not have to suffer, by suggestion or invitation or public example or enticement or moral sophistry, any complication along his way to becoming a healthy man, able to love a woman in a healthy way. Mr. Madison and Mr. Unger live in the same apartment: they are roommates. The history teacher, Mr. Delvecchio, is 40 and unmarried. Well, some people are confirmed bachelors. And indeed they may be. The freedom-clearing presumption of normality ought to obtain.
It follows too that if the public parading of a wrong is an offense against tolerance, so is the public declaration of a propensity to engage in the wrong. Every person alive is beset by temptations. We may utter them to our confessors, or, less often, to our best friends on condition of secrecy, or to our spouses, when it would not cause needless pain. Beyond that, we assist the tolerance of our neighbors by keeping our serpents to ourselves.
If a married man says, “I’m attracted to your daughter, but be assured I’ll never act upon my attraction,” he has at a stroke made it impossible for you ever to see him and your daughter in the same room without the shadow crossing your mind. He has, in his false and hypocritical show of honesty, loaded a heavy burden of decision upon you. Sever your friendship, and the self-hugging candid fellow can soothe himself by saying, “It was he who turned away from me.”
There are things we are better off not knowing about. But there’s more. The man who parades his temptation may be seeking approval. “Look at me! I am tempted to do things with another man that God and nature never intended. But I’m not going to do them. Aren’t I to be congratulated?” No, not a bit. If a man said, “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to open fire upon a bus full of professionals. Oh, I’ll never do it, but just imagine the blood,” we’d rightly consider reporting him to the police. And then it is a small step from approving the brave fellow who makes his temptation conspicuous and conspicuously averts the sin, to suggesting that perhaps the sin isn’t really so bad after all, if such a conspicuously virtuous fellow is tempted by it.
That too is an offense against tolerance. It is to make one’s neighbor always aware of his tolerance: to weary him with it, to pester him little by little into giving in, because it is so much easier to condone than to tolerate. So it is that the most intolerant among us frequently preach about tolerance—to nag their opponents into submission, and to get their way.
21.9.12
Updated compilation of materials against the RH Bill
Here's an updated compilation of materials you can use in arguing against the RH Bill:
> No need for an RH Bill, now or ever
> RH, the academe, and human rights
> Contracepting common sense
> Some notes on Fr. Bernas' response to Bp. Reyes
> Comments on Fr. Bernas' RH Bill article
> Ethical reasoning about a legislation promoting contraception
> Snappy replies against condomics
> Snappy replies to condomics 2
> Snappy replies to condomics 3
> Contraception and natural law
> Wealth and the Catholic Church (response to Angsioco)
> Sex, lies, and the Catholic Church
> Reasons against RH
> Do the right thing: Oppose the RH Bill
> On kicking God out of government
> Why we must fight the RH Bill our way
Feel free to share with your friends.
> No need for an RH Bill, now or ever
> RH, the academe, and human rights
> Contracepting common sense
> Some notes on Fr. Bernas' response to Bp. Reyes
> Comments on Fr. Bernas' RH Bill article
> Ethical reasoning about a legislation promoting contraception
> Snappy replies against condomics
> Snappy replies to condomics 2
> Snappy replies to condomics 3
> Contraception and natural law
> Wealth and the Catholic Church (response to Angsioco)
> Sex, lies, and the Catholic Church
> Reasons against RH
> Do the right thing: Oppose the RH Bill
> On kicking God out of government
> Why we must fight the RH Bill our way
Feel free to share with your friends.
No need for an RH bill, now or ever
(The 19 authors are Dr. Bernardo
Villegas, Ph.D Economics [Harvard University]; Maria Conception Noche,
Alliance for the Family; Frank Padilla, CFC-FFL; Rolando de los Reyes,
Courage Philippines; Dr. Eleanor Palabyab, Doctors for Life; Alan
Dacanay, Families against the RH Bill; Dr. Angelita Aguirre, Family
Media Advocacy Foundation; Leonardo Montemayor, Federation of Free
Farmers; Evelina Atienza, Kababaihan ng Maynila; Joseph Tesoro, Live
Pure Movement; Eric Manalang, Pro-life Philippines; Jemy Gatdula and
Felipe Salvosa, Pro-life Professors; Dr. Raul Nidoy, Science and Reason
for Human Beings; Maribel Descallar, Teodora: In Defense of the
Authentic Woman; Kiboy Tabada, UP for Life; Luis Buenaventura III,
YUPamilya; Anthony Lumicao, Youth United for the Philippines; and
Anthony Perez, Filipinos for Life.)
There is no need for any legislation that guarantees universal access to contraceptives, the so-called reproductive health (RH) care devices, now or ever. Whatever “band-aid” amendments may be proposed by well-intentioned proponents of the RH bill to make it more palatable, the underlying principles behind it are inherently flawed.
Antisustainable growth
The first component of sustainable development is a rate of economic growth that is high enough to contribute, together with appropriate economic policies, to the eradication of poverty. High gross domestic product growth is dependent on a growing and young population as has been stated by numerous international economists and top officials.
The just released Global Competitiveness Report 2012 of the World Economic Forum, like the HSBC 2012 Report, had the Philippines jumping several notches up in economic competitiveness because of our large, growing population.
Population control, however, will backfire and cause the acceleration of our falling fertility rate. Many pro-RH proponents harp on the dangers of population explosion. They have not learned from the lessons of the last two centuries of unparalleled economic progress in many countries of the East and the West that have disproved the Malthusian theory of perpetual poverty caused by the so-called geometric growth of population.
New resources
The unlimited capacity of the human mind to discover new resources and technologies has overcome the “limits to growth” that sowed fears in the last century.
Some of the greatest minds of the 20th century such as Nobel laureates Simon Kuznets and Michael Spence; Dr. Mahbub ul Haq, creator of the development index; and resource specialists Colin Clark and Julian Simon have shown through cross-country studies and long-term analyses of the economic experiences of developed countries that population growth was a positive stimulus to economic progress and that it was surpassed by the growth in real income.
Economists who purport to show the opposite have for their sample very few countries. They also have access to data over a relatively short period compared with the studies showing that there is no correlation between population growth and the spread of mass poverty, which is due to erroneous economic policies and failure of good governance.
Even those few countries in which there is some evidence that birth control policies temporarily helped in boosting economic growth in the short run are now regretting their fertility reduction programs. Well-known are the attempts of the leaders of Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan to appeal to their women to bear more babies.
Premarital sex, abortion
Since material well-being is not the only component of human development or happiness, there is another problem that widespread use of contraceptives can unleash. The findings of Nobel laureate George Akerlof who, despite his protestations that he was in favor of abortion and artificial contraception, demonstrated with empirical evidence that the “reproductive technology shock” led to an increase in premarital sex, and due to contraceptive failure, also in unwed mothers, children without fathers and other societal ills.
A 2009 University of Pennsylvania study, titled “Sexual Revolution,” showed that premarital sex in the United States ballooned from 0.06 percent of women in 1900 to 75 percent today as contraception provided the youth the ease of sex without “cost” or responsibility.
False sense of security
This same link with premarital sex was also suggested by the studies by JE Potter in Brazil, and clearly seen by the work of Dr. Edward Green in Africa. Green, former director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at Harvard University, affirmed that “condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa,” citing studies at the Lancet, Science and British Medical Journal and explaining that the availability of condoms led to earlier and riskier sex by creating a false sense of security.
As the contraceptive mentality sets in (contra = against; conception = beginning of human beings), a negative view of human beings is promoted. A 2011 study in the scientific journal Contraception showed that the rise in contraceptive use in Spain also saw a jump in abortion rate. This link—both logical and empirical—has been acknowledged by leaders of the abortion industry, such as Malcolm Potts, the first medical director of International Planned Parenthood.
Only five nations in the world still prohibit abortion. A hundred years ago all nations did. It was acceptance of contraception that changed their minds. This will happen here, too, if we accept contraception.
Secularist ideology
Another serious flaw in the RH bill is the sweeping generalization about “unwanted pregnancies.” Scientific studies in the United States, especially those by Lant Pritchett of Harvard University, have seriously questioned the assumption made by pro-RH bill advocates that unwanted pregnancies among married women are rampant. The finding of social scientists is that mothers have the number of children they want.
Surveys in the Philippines that purport to show that there are many mothers among poor households, who regret having given birth to some of their children, are suspect. These surveys are usually funded by international organizations that have a strong bias for population control.
Obama administration
It is no secret that in the Democratic National Convention, the Obama administration made it clear that there will be continuing support for abortion. One does not have to be paranoid to assume that if President Obama wins a second term, he and his Secretary of State will continue to target countries like the Philippines to spread their culture of death.
Besides being part of an ideological interpretation of “women’s rights,” such aggressive campaign to promote reproductive health (which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton averred “includes access to abortion”) continues the US-supported worldwide program that was unleashed by the National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests.
Considering the revelations about the participation of foreign interests in lobbying for the RH bill, any version of it will be suspect.
Let us not be naïve. Only last year, Green, through his book “Broken Promises,” exposed in brilliant detail how the West’s AIDS establishment disowned scientific evidence that wide condom use was in fact ineffective in stopping AIDS in Africa, and how those who dominate it—the homosexual ideologues, population controllers and condom suppliers—worsened the epidemic and betrayed the developing world.
Taking away funds for poor
Besides being the antithesis to sustainable economic growth and human development, the RH bill also unwittingly goes against inclusive growth, i.e. economic progress that benefits the poorest among the poor.
It misdiagnoses the reason households of larger family sizes are poorer than those with fewer children. Studies have shown that households with larger family sizes are poorer not because they have too many children but because their heads are the least educated. This should lead policymakers not to convince these poor households to have fewer children, but to invest more resources in their education, especially the women, a proposal that is strongly supported by the studies of Economics Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and Gary Becker.
Improve basic education
Government should divert whatever is budgeted for contraceptives to improving the quality of basic education among the poor. Poor households, especially in the rural areas, choose to have more children because human beings are their only resources, especially considering the failure of the state to provide farmers with infrastructure.
The poor farmers will suffer manpower shortages in their labor-intensive farming if they start imitating the rich in having only one or two children. The same applies to those millions of households that have at least one of its immediate members working abroad. Seducing them to have fewer children could very well leave them even more destitute, as publications of the UN and Asian Development Bank have predicted.
Disseminating a contraceptive mentality among the poor unmasks a condescending and elitist attitude that the poor should not be allowed to multiply. This policy is dangerously close to the eugenics practiced by authoritarian leaders like Adolf Hitler.
Considering that the competitive advantage of the Philippines in the global economy is its young, growing population, a really propoor economic strategy should allow the poor to choose to have as many children as they wish and then to generously support them with infrastructure, educational and technical skills training, and microcredit support, among other things, so that they can turn their children into truly productive resources.
Suspect surveys
Those who support the RH bill refer to surveys purporting to show that there is a large demand for free contraceptives among the poor. As mentioned, these surveys are suspect because they are funded by international agencies advocating contraception and abortion. Questionnaires are formulated to influence respondents to give the desired answers.
A recent consumer survey conducted among the C, D and E households (constituting more than 60 percent of households) by SEED Institute, a field research group, came out with more objective data about the demand for contraceptives among mothers in poor households in Metro Manila.
Wish list
The survey was conducted to identify the consumer patterns of the poor with the intention of giving guidelines to profit-making firms and social enterprises about what goods and services could be tailored specifically to the needs of the poor. The respondents (all mothers) were asked to list down the top three goods or services that they most wanted the government to provide for free after they exhausted their resources to meet their most basic needs. Among more than 20 goods or services on their wish lists, there was no mention whatsoever of “free contraceptives.”
The Philippine Medical Association also asserted that the goal of reducing maternal and child deaths “could be attained by improving maternal and child health care without the necessity of distributing contraceptives. The millions of [pesos] intended for contraceptive devices may just well be applied in improving the skills of our health workers.”
Provoking moral crisis
Several religious groups, Muslim, Protestant and Catholic, oppose the RH measure on moral grounds. Belying pro-RH surveys, these groups, together with other people of goodwill, have rallied by the thousands in many cities and towns around the country, and have contributed in winning post-debate polls on national television.
The Imam Council of the Philippines, leaders of our 4.5 million Muslims, pronounced that contraceptives “make us lose morality.” Throughout the centuries, the Catholic Church has taught that contraception is intrinsically evil. Pope John Paul the Great wrote that contraception “leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love.”
It is, therefore, advisable that Congress refrain from passing a law that would oblige citizens who adhere to their religion to fund an item which they consider immoral. Considering the strong arguments against the RH bill based on secular sciences, it would be prudent for the state not to provoke a religious-moral crisis among a large majority of the Filipino population.
Need for virtue
Lastly, two Asian intellectuals spoke of the virtue needed by a nation. Speaking of the “crime” of contraception, Mahatma Gandhi taught: “Even as many people will be untruthful and violent, humanity may not lower its standard, so also, though many, even the majority, may not respond to the message of self-control, we may not lower our standard.”
Jose Rizal wrote: “Only virtue can save! If our country has ever to be free, it will not be through vice and crime, it will not be so by corrupting its sons, deceiving some and bribing others, no! Redemption presupposes virtue, virtue sacrifice and sacrifice love!”
There is no need for any legislation that guarantees universal access to contraceptives, the so-called reproductive health (RH) care devices, now or ever. Whatever “band-aid” amendments may be proposed by well-intentioned proponents of the RH bill to make it more palatable, the underlying principles behind it are inherently flawed.
Antisustainable growth
The first component of sustainable development is a rate of economic growth that is high enough to contribute, together with appropriate economic policies, to the eradication of poverty. High gross domestic product growth is dependent on a growing and young population as has been stated by numerous international economists and top officials.
The just released Global Competitiveness Report 2012 of the World Economic Forum, like the HSBC 2012 Report, had the Philippines jumping several notches up in economic competitiveness because of our large, growing population.
Population control, however, will backfire and cause the acceleration of our falling fertility rate. Many pro-RH proponents harp on the dangers of population explosion. They have not learned from the lessons of the last two centuries of unparalleled economic progress in many countries of the East and the West that have disproved the Malthusian theory of perpetual poverty caused by the so-called geometric growth of population.
New resources
The unlimited capacity of the human mind to discover new resources and technologies has overcome the “limits to growth” that sowed fears in the last century.
Some of the greatest minds of the 20th century such as Nobel laureates Simon Kuznets and Michael Spence; Dr. Mahbub ul Haq, creator of the development index; and resource specialists Colin Clark and Julian Simon have shown through cross-country studies and long-term analyses of the economic experiences of developed countries that population growth was a positive stimulus to economic progress and that it was surpassed by the growth in real income.
Economists who purport to show the opposite have for their sample very few countries. They also have access to data over a relatively short period compared with the studies showing that there is no correlation between population growth and the spread of mass poverty, which is due to erroneous economic policies and failure of good governance.
Even those few countries in which there is some evidence that birth control policies temporarily helped in boosting economic growth in the short run are now regretting their fertility reduction programs. Well-known are the attempts of the leaders of Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan to appeal to their women to bear more babies.
Premarital sex, abortion
Since material well-being is not the only component of human development or happiness, there is another problem that widespread use of contraceptives can unleash. The findings of Nobel laureate George Akerlof who, despite his protestations that he was in favor of abortion and artificial contraception, demonstrated with empirical evidence that the “reproductive technology shock” led to an increase in premarital sex, and due to contraceptive failure, also in unwed mothers, children without fathers and other societal ills.
A 2009 University of Pennsylvania study, titled “Sexual Revolution,” showed that premarital sex in the United States ballooned from 0.06 percent of women in 1900 to 75 percent today as contraception provided the youth the ease of sex without “cost” or responsibility.
False sense of security
This same link with premarital sex was also suggested by the studies by JE Potter in Brazil, and clearly seen by the work of Dr. Edward Green in Africa. Green, former director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at Harvard University, affirmed that “condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa,” citing studies at the Lancet, Science and British Medical Journal and explaining that the availability of condoms led to earlier and riskier sex by creating a false sense of security.
As the contraceptive mentality sets in (contra = against; conception = beginning of human beings), a negative view of human beings is promoted. A 2011 study in the scientific journal Contraception showed that the rise in contraceptive use in Spain also saw a jump in abortion rate. This link—both logical and empirical—has been acknowledged by leaders of the abortion industry, such as Malcolm Potts, the first medical director of International Planned Parenthood.
Only five nations in the world still prohibit abortion. A hundred years ago all nations did. It was acceptance of contraception that changed their minds. This will happen here, too, if we accept contraception.
Secularist ideology
Another serious flaw in the RH bill is the sweeping generalization about “unwanted pregnancies.” Scientific studies in the United States, especially those by Lant Pritchett of Harvard University, have seriously questioned the assumption made by pro-RH bill advocates that unwanted pregnancies among married women are rampant. The finding of social scientists is that mothers have the number of children they want.
Surveys in the Philippines that purport to show that there are many mothers among poor households, who regret having given birth to some of their children, are suspect. These surveys are usually funded by international organizations that have a strong bias for population control.
Obama administration
It is no secret that in the Democratic National Convention, the Obama administration made it clear that there will be continuing support for abortion. One does not have to be paranoid to assume that if President Obama wins a second term, he and his Secretary of State will continue to target countries like the Philippines to spread their culture of death.
Besides being part of an ideological interpretation of “women’s rights,” such aggressive campaign to promote reproductive health (which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton averred “includes access to abortion”) continues the US-supported worldwide program that was unleashed by the National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests.
Considering the revelations about the participation of foreign interests in lobbying for the RH bill, any version of it will be suspect.
Let us not be naïve. Only last year, Green, through his book “Broken Promises,” exposed in brilliant detail how the West’s AIDS establishment disowned scientific evidence that wide condom use was in fact ineffective in stopping AIDS in Africa, and how those who dominate it—the homosexual ideologues, population controllers and condom suppliers—worsened the epidemic and betrayed the developing world.
Taking away funds for poor
Besides being the antithesis to sustainable economic growth and human development, the RH bill also unwittingly goes against inclusive growth, i.e. economic progress that benefits the poorest among the poor.
It misdiagnoses the reason households of larger family sizes are poorer than those with fewer children. Studies have shown that households with larger family sizes are poorer not because they have too many children but because their heads are the least educated. This should lead policymakers not to convince these poor households to have fewer children, but to invest more resources in their education, especially the women, a proposal that is strongly supported by the studies of Economics Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and Gary Becker.
Improve basic education
Government should divert whatever is budgeted for contraceptives to improving the quality of basic education among the poor. Poor households, especially in the rural areas, choose to have more children because human beings are their only resources, especially considering the failure of the state to provide farmers with infrastructure.
The poor farmers will suffer manpower shortages in their labor-intensive farming if they start imitating the rich in having only one or two children. The same applies to those millions of households that have at least one of its immediate members working abroad. Seducing them to have fewer children could very well leave them even more destitute, as publications of the UN and Asian Development Bank have predicted.
Disseminating a contraceptive mentality among the poor unmasks a condescending and elitist attitude that the poor should not be allowed to multiply. This policy is dangerously close to the eugenics practiced by authoritarian leaders like Adolf Hitler.
Considering that the competitive advantage of the Philippines in the global economy is its young, growing population, a really propoor economic strategy should allow the poor to choose to have as many children as they wish and then to generously support them with infrastructure, educational and technical skills training, and microcredit support, among other things, so that they can turn their children into truly productive resources.
Suspect surveys
Those who support the RH bill refer to surveys purporting to show that there is a large demand for free contraceptives among the poor. As mentioned, these surveys are suspect because they are funded by international agencies advocating contraception and abortion. Questionnaires are formulated to influence respondents to give the desired answers.
A recent consumer survey conducted among the C, D and E households (constituting more than 60 percent of households) by SEED Institute, a field research group, came out with more objective data about the demand for contraceptives among mothers in poor households in Metro Manila.
Wish list
The survey was conducted to identify the consumer patterns of the poor with the intention of giving guidelines to profit-making firms and social enterprises about what goods and services could be tailored specifically to the needs of the poor. The respondents (all mothers) were asked to list down the top three goods or services that they most wanted the government to provide for free after they exhausted their resources to meet their most basic needs. Among more than 20 goods or services on their wish lists, there was no mention whatsoever of “free contraceptives.”
The Philippine Medical Association also asserted that the goal of reducing maternal and child deaths “could be attained by improving maternal and child health care without the necessity of distributing contraceptives. The millions of [pesos] intended for contraceptive devices may just well be applied in improving the skills of our health workers.”
Provoking moral crisis
Several religious groups, Muslim, Protestant and Catholic, oppose the RH measure on moral grounds. Belying pro-RH surveys, these groups, together with other people of goodwill, have rallied by the thousands in many cities and towns around the country, and have contributed in winning post-debate polls on national television.
The Imam Council of the Philippines, leaders of our 4.5 million Muslims, pronounced that contraceptives “make us lose morality.” Throughout the centuries, the Catholic Church has taught that contraception is intrinsically evil. Pope John Paul the Great wrote that contraception “leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love.”
It is, therefore, advisable that Congress refrain from passing a law that would oblige citizens who adhere to their religion to fund an item which they consider immoral. Considering the strong arguments against the RH bill based on secular sciences, it would be prudent for the state not to provoke a religious-moral crisis among a large majority of the Filipino population.
Need for virtue
Lastly, two Asian intellectuals spoke of the virtue needed by a nation. Speaking of the “crime” of contraception, Mahatma Gandhi taught: “Even as many people will be untruthful and violent, humanity may not lower its standard, so also, though many, even the majority, may not respond to the message of self-control, we may not lower our standard.”
Jose Rizal wrote: “Only virtue can save! If our country has ever to be free, it will not be through vice and crime, it will not be so by corrupting its sons, deceiving some and bribing others, no! Redemption presupposes virtue, virtue sacrifice and sacrifice love!”
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