Press Release
July 16, 2009

Transcript of Sen. Mar Roxas' speech at the FVR-RPDEV Forum

I thought long and hard about what I should say to you. So many things need to be said, that we could drown in the minutiae and get lost. I think that's one of the hallmarks of a good President: not getting lost in the minutiae, keeping the big picture in sight, juggling so many different things atop a high-wire while still keeping his bearings, his principles, and his vision intact.

This good working order is the most necessary ingredient in our development mix. But necessary as it is, it is still insufficient to determine success. And therein lies the facts of life.

I come before you knowing full well that this is a job interview, for hiring come 2010. What comes to mind now ios, "To whom will I ensure my company? And in this case, to whom will I entrust our country?" Who will put together all of the plans and programs, the dreams and ideas?" And so rather than give you a five point program, or a fifteen-point this or a six point at that, I'm going to tell you about my view of government, the state of the economy, why it hasn't succeeded, and what we ought to do to make it work for the people. I'm going to tell you about these so that you know how I think, and when the call comes at 3 in the morning, you'll know the character and the mindset that informs my decisions.

In the last 20 years, we have seen 27 nations of Europe take off the armor of nationalism in exchange for the coat of solidarity and consensus. The Asean, in the past 25 years, have put up the Asean Charter that sets forth the path into inter-independence. Global citizenry is the call of the times. The more than 8 million Filipinos abroad are our vanguard.

The collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989 came in step with the rapid demise of the world communist order. Today, human security is not challenged by large clashes of ideological forces, but breaches of security and peace made by small extremist cells engaged in asymmetric war.

Technology is now becoming a tool shaping politics and governance. One can only look how the crisis in Iran has been catalogued in Twitter, or how the US elections were driven by blogs, Facebook, and You Tube, acknowledging that technology will be our cutting edge to enforce transparency and honesty in Government.

Thru this prism and the prism of lessons learned over the last twenty or so, I believe that we need to rethink what is popularly understood as the interaction between the market and government. At bottom, this is what I believe: to maximize the power of the market for the good of all people, an activist government is needed.

After we embarked on a golden age of deregulation, liberalization, global and regional integration, thus unleashing the power of the market, it is time that we now all act as one. It is a lesson we could take in this world financial crisis.

Too often we have equated have free markets with having an 'absent government.' Letting "market forces work" meant leave the market alone. . Ironically it is clear that without the rules and laws and enforcement power that only government can provide, the market may not in fact allocate resources in the most efficient manner. Much less in an equitable manner.

The irony of deregulation is that it needs strong regulators to work as planned, where competition or proper regulatory controls drive down prices and people harvest the gains from these lower prices. Without strong institutions, predatory or monopoly elements that are well-placed to begin with, will have a field day. Regulators ensure that consumers, the private citizen, benefit at the end of the day.

Recent examples are the ill equipped regulation by the NTC of telecoms and the lapses of the Securities and Exchange Commission on Legacy show us that indeed, regulators have been absent in those leagues.

Likewise for liberalization. Without adequate rules and laws and managers who can manage the transition, anticipate difficulties and provide appropriate safety nets, net gains may be marginal, and even negative. In transition economies, we now know that the 'big bang' approach to restructuring, intended to force change by fiat, fails because basic laws and capable oversight agencies are simply not there.

This speaks to another irony. That economic integration requires that each country pulls its own weight. Indeed, self-reliance of a country should be mixed with interdependence. Thus while a country will go hungry if it isolates itself in this new world order, the solution is not to lay itself open for the picking. Borders of economic jurisdictions must be open, but should not be weak. On the contrary, the economic policies within each jurisdiction must be clear and well enforced for economic integration to work.

In short, we have seen that markets can be ruthless. Greed and avarice are the very fuel of injustice ... and it is the poor, the helpless and powerless- who are run over in the rush towards free markets. When elephants clash, the ants get trodden upon. And in our country, there are way too many elephants oblivious to the plight of the people.

The binding constraint to our development path as a nation, to achieving and sustaining a better quality of life for all Filipinos, has been poor institutions, the weakest institutions that stop our development. Regulatory agencies, enforcement agencies, and corruption are empirical evidence that support this.

The per capita growth rate of the Philippines between 1965-1995 was 1.2% compared to the other 4 in ASEAN at 4.8%, South Asia at 1.9% and East Asia 6.6%.

Thus an activist government is needed. BY activist, I do not mean big or controlling. And certainly, I do not mean corrupt. Rather I mean a government that is nimble, quick to respond and professional.

In IT-speak, a good processor is not just a smart one, but a quicker one. We need a government that can render systematic responses and shorter decision-making processes. One that can deal with surprises, one that is alert, aware of the ever-changing global and domestic environment and which has the facility to act immediately and effectively on behalf of all Filipinos.

An activist government would have to be built on the foundation of accountability, transparency, independence of enforcement agencies, meritocracy and professionalism. We need to restore these to our public domain where these have been terribly undermine and corrupted over the last 8 or so years.

Indeed, the evidence is right here. Worldwide indicators have decreased between 1996 and 2007. Its largest decreases have been in Control of Corruption, from 45.1 to 22.2 or a decrease of 22.9 percentage points, and Rule of Law, from 54.8 to 33.8 or a decrease of 21 points.

The bottom line is the people. To make room for their dreams, to allow succeeding generations to build on the efforts of previous ones, we must have an activist government. A government that seeks out the best, and only the best interest, of the people.

In 1993 0r 1995, I heard an anecdote about a certain elder statesman who was at the helm of the peace process in Mindanao. The talks with the MNLF were nearing fruition, and he traveled to Mindanao to say his piece to the people. Traveling down a country road, his convoy was suddenly pelted with sticks and tomatoes. His stand on peace, back then, was indeed not very popular with the people on the ground.

And yet, this was the era of one of the longest ceasefires in Mindanao. It was the era of a successful negotiation with the MNLF; it was an era of peace. We can look back to that day when his car was pelted with sticks and tomatoes as the day when a leader was brave enough to say: You can throw anything at me, but I stand committed to my principles. Now, can we please sit down and talk?

That is what leadership is: It means standing by one's principles. It means being willing to lay down your cards, despite the spite or controversy that will surely come your way - all of these while resolving conflicts, managing crises, seeing the big picture and connecting the dots all for the interest of the nation. This kind of leadership happened in one previous administration in recent memory, and it was largely because of the vision and tenacity of a single visionary President.

There's a saying that says: If you want to go fast, go alone. And if you want to go far, be with many. Thus, my dream is to instill a kind of government that will not rely on a single person to juggle on the high-wire. I dream of an activist government, one that has a streamlined bureaucracy - an army, so to speak, of people who know how to juggle on the high-wire, who do not forget the bottom line: The people and our nation.

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