Yesterday marked the turnover of the helm of government to the new president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino 3rd. There are immense challenges that he must face—from his daang matuwid to undoing the decades-long underdevelopment that our people face. How far President Aquino’s campaign for reform will reach will depend on how far he is willing to go to reverse the policies that have kept this situation in place.

While there is nominal economic growth due to increased corporate profits and personal wealth of a few families, there remain 66 million poor Filipinos trying to survive on less than P90 per day. There is a dearth of jobs that has already pushed nine million of us overseas to find work as a direct result of a lack of manufacturing growth, a weakened industry and a shrinking agricultural base made worse by unequal trading agreements.

Despite its failure as a paradigm, past governments has kept on relying on external sources of growth such as exports and overseas Filipino worker’s remittances. They have also kept on attracting foreign investments and capital in the hope of offloading the burden of financing development projects such as developing energy resources, infrastructure and utilities. The projects, which pushed through resulted in skyrocketing profits for the investors and backbreaking rates for consumers.

Liberalization, privatization and deregulation policies that sold or privatized government services and public utilities only gave short and temporary earnings for the government while we as long-term consumers have to face month-on-month increases in fuel, electricity and other costs that erode whatever wages we bring home. According to IBON Foundation, the infusion of foreign capital and goods in the country has even created rich opportunities for commissions, bribes and smuggling by politicians and bureaucrats.

We note with hope that President Aquino 3rd will continue his stand when he voted as a Senator against the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001. He also has voted “no” to the controversial Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement. We just hope that he reverses the path of liberalization, privatization and deregulation taken by the 1986 Aquino administration under the same National Economic and Development Authority chief he is now reappointing.

The challenges for his choice for Department of Science and Technology head, Engineer Mario Go Montejo, are equally daunting. Secretary Montejo has to contend with not just reversing the brain drain not only for scientists but for engineers and inventors like him. The recent programs of the government such as the Engineering Research and Development for Technology and the National Science Complex in UP Diliman will fall short if there is no corresponding domestic growth that will absorb these highly trained and motivated men and women.

With our country lacking of basic industries and facing a shrinking manufacturing sector, the existing corporations that are ready to absorb them right now are mostly foreign owned and controlled. Without a clear push to develop local industries, are we then infusing several billion pesos of public money to our educational system to produce graduate students in science and engineering for the benefit of these foreign investors?

It is also a matter of not just having these buildings up or giving stipends to these scholars. It is also vital that the Philippine government ensures that there is appropriate yearly budget for research and development by these students as well as the maintenance and operation of existing buildings and facilities. The budget for science and technology remains lower than UN standards despite the recent infusion of money for the projects mentioned above.

Secretary Montejo has to also put serious support for inventors. The lines of collaboration between the academic scientific community and inventors have to be bridged. Clear programs for the utilization of national inventive talent for the Filipino-owned small and medium industrial firms should be put up.
Agricultural production—in which 70 percent of our people are engaged—has to be developed with local scientific support as part of a genuine agrarian reform program. That agrarian reform program should start with a true redistribution of land to the tillers.

The development of local science and technology is inextricably linked with the development of a local industrial eco-nomy. The existing industrial underdevelopment brought about by the dependence on foreign investments and imports for capital and the continuing production of agricultural goods, extraction of raw minerals and reassembly of products for export is untenable. What we need to have is to look at the problem not only in the supply side—the lack of productive scientific and technical manpower—but also on the lack of local industrial drive that will need our scientists and engineers.

The challenge for the administration of President Benigno Aquino 3rd to deliver on his promised reforms is
immense yet not entirely impossible. One need not be a superman to undo underdevelopment but one need to be a genuine nationalist and believer in our domestic capacity to grow based on our own strength and capacity.