Wexistence

This is happening! I’m proud to be a supporter of the RH bill, and to those who think that this is a fad, I will have you know that I have been an RH advocate for the last 10 years, long before RH was getting this much media attention.

The RH bill won’t solve poverty, but it will bring down the rates of maternal and infant mortality, decrease the number of abortions that result from unwanted pregnancies, educate the youth who are engaging in risky sexual behavior with no knowledge of its consequences, and promote equity for the poor by giving them access to reproductive health services that are easily available to the rich.

If you’re unconvinced that the poor need RH, I invite you to spend some time in Tondo to get to know the families who are living in squalor. Let me introduce you to Manong Pedicab Driver who has sixteen children and no pedicab (he sold it to buy medicine when his baby got sick). The family members eat once a day, if at all, and take turns sleeping on the cardboard floor of a shanty that’s barely 4 by 4 meters. Or 42-year-old Nanay Labandera who has nine children and whose last pregnancy nearly killed her. She doesn’t want to have any more children but she has no control over her reproductivity — her drunkard husband beats her when she denies him sex.

RH is just one component of poverty reduction. There is still much work to be done in numerous other areas. Thankfully we have a NAPC secretary who knows what he’s doing and a president who seems serious about poverty reduction, at least as far as budget allocation is concerned. I’ve never been a fan of President Aquino, but he has allocated more funds for poverty reduction programs than any other president before him.

I was fortunate to be part of a group of NGO representatives from various sectors with whom NAPC held a consultation on the National Anti-Poverty Strategy and Localization/Empowerment Framework. It’s a good plan, and it’s heartening that the government is sincere about listening to us and working with us. (Sige na nga PNoy, dahil rito at dahil sinusuportahan mo ang RH bill, peace na tayo.)

It’s an exciting time to be doing development work!

Mayor Robredo and one of his biggest fans (me)

As a student of political economy, Mayor Robredo’s transformational leadership in Naga City left a huge impression on me. I read this journal article in college and it was the first of many lessons that would lead me to firmly believe that there is hope for the Philippines. This conviction fuels my work in education, responsible citizenship and good governance.

I do development work as part of Synergeia Foundation, an organization that has Mayor Robredo among its esteemed trustees. For the last eight years Synergeia has been empowering local communities to practice participatory governance in education, drawing lessons from the Naga experience. We’ve made it work in 168 cities and municipalities all over the country, including ARMM. We believe there’s no reason it can’t work in the remaining 1,466 — especially if Mayor Robredo were at the helm of DILG.

Synergeia’s president and CEO, Dr. Milwida M. Guevara, said it best when she listed Ten Reasons Why It is Best for the Country to Have Naga City Mayor Jesse Robredo as DILG Secretary:

1. He leads by example. He is honest, competent and just.
2. He will institute accountability. Measures of performance for local government officials will be defined. Good officials will be rewarded and non-performers will be sanctioned.
3. All the operations of DILG will be made transparent.
4. He will inspire and mentor mayors on how to translate participatory governance from an idea to being real.
5. He is a visionary and thinks outside the box. He has the proven capacity to develop programs to solve red tape and bureaucratic procedures.
6. He will give dignity to every Filipino by defining public services that each resident is entitled to as well the standards within which they should be delivered.
7. He will work with non-governmental organizations, people’s organizations and civil society in providing oversight on the performance of local government officials and DILG personnel.
8. He is thrifty and will see to it that the DILG’s budget will be cost-effective.
9. He will has the engineering skills to simplify processes and translate them into computerized processes that will streamline operations and decision-making.
10. He makes us proud of being a Filipino because he is outstanding in every way.

Mayor Robredo, ang laban mo, laban naming mga Pilipino.

Find out more about Mayor Robredo on the Support Mayor Jesse Robredo for DILG Secretary Facebook page.

On my social networks I posted a link to the Inquirer article Aquino accused of posturing on land reform issue. The article makes reference to a New York Times interview with Fernando Cojuangco, Noynoy’s cousin and chief operating officer of the holding company that owns Hacienda Luisita*, in which he said the Cojuangco clan has no intention of distributing the land to the tenants. In response to this, Cavite Rep. Crispin Remulla was quoted saying “[Noynoy] cannot control his family and shows the weakness of a person masquerading as a leader. He cannot stand up to the family patriarch and proves he is not his own man.”

A friend of mine who is a Noynoy supporter reacted negatively.

Him:

Let’s all hope then that all our cousins and assorted relatives are all virtuous, lest their actions be attributed to us.

Me:

I don’t think that’s the point. I think the concern of many is whether or not Noynoy is strong enough to resist pressure from his assorted relatives. According to Malacanang insiders during Cory’s presidency, his mother wasn’t, and the Aquino-Conjuancos supposedly had their fingers in all sorts of pies.

Him:

The point is that conclusions about his position are drawn from statements made by other people. Aquino is posturing on land reform because his cousin says he’s not serious about it? And now you’re implying because his mom wasn’t able to resist the pressure, he won’t be able to handle it either? Come on….

Me:

It’s not that I think he will succumb to the pressure simply because his mother did. The question of whether or not he will succumb is not a question of DNA. It’s a question of strength. People who knew Cory and who were there during her administration say that although Cory was a saint, she wasn’t strong enough to fend off her relatives. Is Noynoy stronger than his mother? I don’t know. So far Noynoy does not seem to be a particularly strong, decisive personality and that does not fill me with confidence.

Him:

We need Moral Leadership at this stage. The claim on intelligence, or political will, or competence are minor considerations at this stage of our collective lives. We need someone up there who at least has not YET been tainted by corruption or greed. This intelligence-competence-will argument was the exact same thing people used in 2004 when they voted for GMA. They got what they deserved. Unfortunately, so did the rest of us.

I let the exchange end there because it’s pointless to argue with people who’ve already made up their minds. But to those who are still on the fence, I pose the following questions:

Why does Noynoy have a monopoly of morality? What good is his so-called morality if he doesn’t have the intelligence to understand the nation’s problems or the will to implement politically difficult solutions? Where does his moral ascendancy come from? From his parents? On one hand, Noynoy supporters say we shouldn’t judge Noynoy on the basis of Kamag-anak, Inc. On the other, they expect us to accept his Moral Leadership on the basis of Ninoy and Cory. Ano ba talaga? Should we judge a person by their blood relations or not? Stripped of the Cory Magic and the Aquino Legacy and the messianic narratives that people have woven around him, what are we left with to judge Noynoy? Let us consider his personal merit, or lack thereof.

*GMANews.TV special report on Hacienda Luisita:
Part 1: Hacienda Luisita’s past haunts Noynoy’s future
Part 2: Cory’s land reform legacy to test Noynoy’s political will
Part 3: How a worker’s strike became the Luisita massacre
Part 4: After Luisita massacre, more killings linked to protest

Some thoughts provoked by Winnie Monsod’s Mussings*:

1. I, too, share the same fears about Manny Villar.

2. After Cory died, when people first started buzzing about a Noynoy presidency, some government insiders I know rolled their eyes at the idea and dismissed Noynoy as “tamad” and “bobo.” Senate staffers observed that Noynoy is dull, can’t seem to keep up during senate deliberations, and is a notoriously late riser because he’s up all night playing PS3. Some community organizers we work with in Nueva Ecija said that they supported Noynoy up until they actually met him at a sortie, where he did not answer their questions satisfactorily and he was so spaced out that they wondered if he was autistic. A senior government official during Cory’s presidency said that while Cory was a “saint” she did not have the intellectual prowess and technical knowledge to be an effective president. Even people who adored Cory have come to realize that pureness of heart is not enough to run a country.
3. I understand why people so desperately want to believe in Noynoy. After Erap, followed by nine years of GMA, we just want a president whom we can trust. Even if he is painfully mediocre. Sure, Noynoy’s clean and he won’t steal, but c’mon. He has no outstanding achievements and he wouldn’t have even been considered as a presidential candidate if Cory hadn’t died. It was the outpouring of love for Cory and all that she represents (hope, democracy, goodness) that propelled Noynoy to prominence. Without his Aquino lineage, he is nothing.
4. Men Sta. Ana defends Noynoy’s lackluster legislative record, saying “The number of laws sponsored by a senator or congressman does not make one a competent legislator.” Okay, sure. Quality over quantity. I get that. But seriously, 9 bills? That’s all? Miriam authored 738 in the same time period. And technically sound as Noynoy’s bills may be, they aren’t exactly exceptional. It’s not like he has gems in there like, say, Mar Roxas’ affordable medicines act or EVAT funds for educational and healthcare law.
5. During presidential debates it’s all motherhood statements, he throws around terms he clearly does not understand, and when backed into a corner he invokes the memory of his parents as a talisman against difficult questions. During the Face-to-Face forum with LGUs, Noynoy sounded like he was just parroting sound bytes that had been previously fed to him by his handlers and could not expound further. Also during that forum, it became apparent that though Noynoy is chair of the Senate Committee on Local Government, he knows nothing about local government issues, particularly devolution. His answer to everything was “Pinag-aaralan ko pa ho.”
6. While Noynoy’s campaign slogan “Kung Walang Corrupt Walang Mahirap” is emotionally compelling, it is also largely untrue. Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand are all notoriously corrupt but they were able to significantly reduce poverty. The solution to the problem of poverty is much more complex than the slogan would have you believe. Corruption is just one of many problems. Eliminate corruption and you’d still have to: (1) stabilize the country’s fiscal position; (2) provide adequate infrastructure; (3) strengthen the investment climate; (4) equitably distribute growth among sectors; (5) address the unequal pattern of development among regions; (6) alleviate demographic pressure; (7) implement genuine agrarian reform; (8) develop human capital, invest in basic services, especially education and health… and that’s just the beginning of a whole laundry list of things the next administration will have to address. An administration that is not corrupt will not necessarily know which strategies to pursue. “I will not steal” is not a substitute for “I am technically competent.” Integrity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for one seeking public office.
7. As unimpressed as I am with Noynoy, I admit that there are valid reasons to vote for him. It just annoys me that people insist on romanticizing him. Let’s recognize him for what he is: a mediocre candidate, but the only who seems capable of beating Villar in the polls. If it’s down to a choice between Noynoy and Villar, I can understand why you’d choose Noynoy. But please be honest with yourself and cut the crap about his “competence.” He is not our messiah. He has not demonstrated that he has any capacity whatsoever of fulfilling all the hopes and dreams that the nation is so eager to pin on him.
8. A number of people I respect and admire support Noynoy for pragmatic reasons. Former Finance Secretary Bobby de Ocampo told me that this election isn’t about who’s smarter or more competent, but it’s about making a clean break from the present administration. I don’t necessarily agree but it’s certainly something to think about.
9. I like many of the people who’ve chosen to rally behind Noynoy, among them Mar Roxas (accomplished in both the private and public sector, impressive legislative and executive track record, my presidential candidate if he hadn’t stepped down to make way for Noynoy), Risa Hontiveros (beauty and brains, Nobel peace prize nominee for her work as chair the Government Panel’s Reciprocal Working Committee on Socio-Economic Reforms in the Peace Talks with the National Democratic Front), Neric Acosta (distinguished academician and political scientist, principal author of many environmental laws including groundbreaking Clean Air Act), Jesse Robredo (outstanding multi-awarded Mayor of Naga City, my dream DILG Secretary), Mike Luz (former DepEd Undersecretary, the brains behind the LP platform on education, my dream DepEd Secretary). Noynoy is not lacking in advisers, intelligent people who understand our various problems and have concrete plans on how to solve them (even if Noynoy himself doesn’t). Maybe that’s enough to get him through. Maybe it’s okay that he’s not brilliant for as long as he listens to his betters. But I’m not sure.
10. I share Ma’am Winnie’s concerns about the Liberal trapos: “My only concern with Noynoy is how deep he might be in the Liberal Party and whether he has accumulate political debts to Liberal trapos. The Liberal Party, like any party, has its own share of crooks (including those bandwagon trapos who jumped off GMA’s boat to ride on Aquino’s popularity).” In that sense, Noynoy is really no different from Gibo, whose only real flaw seems to be membership in Lakas-Kampi-CMD — GMA’s party. If the concern about both candidates is political indebtedness to the trapos in their respective parties, what then makes Noynoy a more desirable candidate than Gibo?
11. Gibo’s party affiliation does concern me, but the guy is a shrewd politician. He’s managed to distance himself from GMA and the party. It’s a tough balancing act because he needs the political machinery of the party but at the same time he doesn’t agree with their positions on a lot of issues. I’m impressed by the finesse with which he’s handling himself. But I’m still wary of the people around him. And it’s still not clear who will hold important cabinet positions if he does become president. I want to make sure that no one is pulling his strings, that he won’t be so politically indebted to the party that it will compromise the decisions he’ll make in the future. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt though. Thus far he seems to be his own man. I don’t believe that if elected he will merely be the party’s lapdog.
12. Gibo is a bar topnotcher and a Harvard magna cum laude. He is intelligent. Unlike many of the candidates out there, Gibo doesn’t fumble for answers. He knows what he’s talking about. I’m impressed by the depth of his understanding of issues. (In this interview with National Artist F Sionil Jose, he answered all the questions impressively, and I particularly liked his answers on poverty, population management, and the Philippines’ “damaged culture.” He quoted Mancur Olson and Thomas Friedman in the same breath and is apparently a neo-institutionalist. Be still my heart!) He’s not afraid to take tough stances, he will say things other candidates are afraid to say (e.g. disarm government and non-government groups in ARMM, yes to comprehensive reproductive health program). As far as I’m concerned he’s out-performed all the other candidates in the presidential debates.
13. Gibo is strong and confident, but I see no traces of ego whatsoever. I like that. He does not see himself as a messiah; he is offering himself up as a humble public servant.
14. Gibo exudes sincerity. I feel like I can trust him, and his public record suggests he is deserving of that trust. He is untainted by allegations of corruption, and is by all accounts an honest man. Noynoy isn’t the only one with a legacy to protect. Gibo is proud of his name and has carefully guarded his reputation.
15. Ma’am Winnie’s criticism of Gibo isn’t even really criticism. She’s holding his “galing at talino” against him because GMA supposedly has those qualities but she turned out to be a lousy president. She’s holding his eloquence against him because Marcos was a great public speaker. Should we not elect intelligent presidents just because they’ve screwed us over in the past? We elected a dumb president (i.e. Erap) and that didn’t turn out so well for us either. Intelligence is not enough to ensure a good president. But neither is moral uprightness (e.g. Cory).

* It would seem that someone wants to use Winnie Monsod’s influence to win votes for Noynoy. Ma’am Winnie says she did not write the “Why I Will Vote for Noynoy” statement that has been attributed to her. I’m kind of relieved. I was surprised when I first read it, having previously heard her views on Noynoy. My reactions to the piece are the same regardless of who wrote it though.

I work for an organization that does community-based education reform programs. Currently we are operating in 164 municipalities all over the country and our programs cover nearly two million public school children.

We rely on a number of assessment tools to gauge the academic performance of pupils in our sites. We track their performance over the years to help us measure the impact of our interventions. One of these tools is the National Achievement Test (NAT), which is administered yearly by the Department of Education (DepEd).

In the school years before SY 2008-2009, DepEd’s National Educational Testing and Research Center (NETRC) annually provided us a copy of the results for the entire country. They came in nifty Excel spreadsheets like this and showed the mean percentage scores (MPS) per division per region for that particular school year. It was a relatively hassle-free transaction.

In SY 2008-2009, DepEd, in typical government fashion, decided to make a simple process unnecessarily difficult. They decided that they would no longer release the results for the entire country. They made us make separate requests for each division in which we have projects. It took them forever to process our requests. We received some of the results, we didn’t receive the others.

Then to make matters worse, this SY 2009-2010 they issued DepEd Order No. 91, s. 2009 to “regulate” the use of the NAT results.

Before a “researcher” can obtain a copy of the results, he/she must first jump through the following hoops:

• Prove that he/she is qualified to do research work (They do not, however, specify what kind of proof they require. And anyway, what if I’m not “qualified” to do research work? What if I’m just an ordinary citizen who wants to know the levels of academic performance in different parts of the country?)
• Present a copy of his/her approved thesis/dissertation proposal signed by my thesis adviser (But… I’m not a student and I’m not going to use the results for a thesis/dissertation. Why is there the implicit assumption that the only people who want a copy of the results are students?)
• Submit an endorsement signed by his/her dean (What dean?)
• Sign a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) stating that he/she:
  • Will not compare regions, divisions, schools and examinees without taking into consideration other variables that may have a substantial effect on the outcome of the test (Well, what if I’m not going to use the results in a study? What if I’m going to present the results in an education summit to show a particular community just how badly their kids are performing compared to the national average and to drive home the point that their situation is dire and that they need to do something about it?)
  • Will furnish a DepEd a copy of my study (Paranoid much?)
• Pay the corresponding fee for the data requested (We didn’t have to pay for the data before. Now there’s a rate of 1 peso per pupil. I was aghast. So if we want the NAT results of 1.76 million pupils does that mean we have to pay 1.76 million pesos?!? I nearly fell out of my chair when NETRC said yes.*)

Furthermore, NETRC will only release 10% of the actual number of examinees per test per year. The 2009 NAT was taken by some 1.76 million pupils from 31,196 public and 2,386 private elementary schools nationwide. That means at most, we can only get the results for 176,000 students. Such a small percentage does not paint an accurate picture of academic performance in the country.

But that seems to be the whole point of Order No. 91. DepEd says they want to “safeguard and prevent the misuse, mishandling, misinterpretation, exploitation and manipulation” of the NAT results, but to me the subtext of that policy reads, “We don’t want to show anyone the results because they make us look bad.”

DepEd is perceived to be the least corrupt government agency and has an approval rating of 62%. I guess people don’t know just how bad things really are. How devoid the system is of professionalism, transparency and accountability. How bureaucratic and inefficient it is. How appallingly feudal the culture is, how superintendents are lords and their divisions their personal fiefdoms. How politicized appointments are and how much discretion there is over the use of funds.

One of the groups I’m involved with, the Movement for Good Governance, just held a roundtable discussion on education reform with leading experts on the topic. The results will be published in a paper that will form part of our 2010 development agenda. In the mean time, the following make for good reading on the subject:

• The Challenge of Governance in a Large Bureaucracy (Department of Education) by former DepEd Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz
• Department of Education: When Refroms Don’t Transform (UNDP Philippine Human Development Report 2008-2009)
• United Nations: The Philippines trails Tanzania, Zambia in education
• Education for All – Global Monitoring Report 2010
• UNICEF EAPR Statistics on Philippine Education
• UNESCO Statistics on Philippine Education
• NSCB Statistical Indicators on Education

* So apparently there are packages of sorts. The NETRC guy I was talking to said that if we want to save we can opt to pay per school instead of per student. The sample computation they gave me for one of our schools in Tondo came up to 320 pesos for two school years (SY 2008-2009 and SY 2009-2010, which are the school years we don’t have data for). That rate brings the total cost down to a less shocking amount, but it’s still prohibitive. We have programs in thousands of schools! I can understand charging a small processing fee but their rates are unreasonable. These test results are public records and should be made available without restriction. Congress needs to pass the freedom of information bill post haste.

My notes from a talk Vida and I gave last year to high school seniors in LSGH, and then some. Relevant to some points I want to make in a later post.

“It is time to move the debate about globalization forward … we can to a large extent pick and choose between the bits of globalization we like and those we don’t … Our challenge is to grasp the opportunities that globalization offers while taking the sting out of its threats.” ¹

Economic Globalization

Some view globalization as a key to future world economic development. In theory, removing barriers to trade should bring immense benefits to everyone. It will lead to greater specialization and division of labor as each country concentrates on producing goods and services in which they have a competitive advantage. Freer trade leads to greater efficiency and cheaper products.

Other regard it with hostility and even fear, believing that it increases inequality within and between nations, threatens employment and living standards and thwarts social progress. The increased integration of markets and the free flow of capital and labor across borders can result in greater social instability. Local economies are made more vulnerable to external shocks in the wider economy and local industries are threatened to be run out of business by their more competitive counterparts elsewhere.

The benefits of globalization are real, yet so are its dangers. It is up to countries to strike a balance between the two, to “grasp the opportunities that globalization offers while taking the sting out of its threats.”

Sovereign nations can manage the rate and pace of globalization by the laws they make, the policies they adopt and the international agreements they enter. International institutions such as the WTO exist precisely so that the nations of the world can come together to discuss and negotiate the “bits of globalization that they like and those they don’t.”

There are no international laws that tell nations precisely how they should go about globalization. There is no manual on globalization, there are no easy steps 1, 2 and 3. Globalization can be viewed as a game: nations are the key players, international institutions like the WTO are the referees, and the rules are negotiable and are made up as they go along.

Free Trade vs. Fair Trade

Some people may hold the false notion that the WTO is for free trade at any cost. Beyond free trade, the WTO is for fair trade. The WTO seeks to establish an equitable trading system among developed and developing countries. This means implementing rules that will ensure that trade is fair, stable, predictable and transparent. Within this framework, countries can come up with policies and agreements that will allow them to benefit from globalization while cushioning themselves from the negative effects.

The WTO has nearly 150 members, accounting for over 97% of world trade. The legitimacy of the WTO is unquestionable.

The WTO puts order where there would otherwise be anarchy. According to microeconomics, markets are not effective in producing “public goods” and unrestrained competition can lead to “public bads”. When the market fails, the state intervenes to generate collaboration rather than competition. In the international political economy, there is no “super-state” to force sovereign states to collaborate instead of compete. Economic globalization can lead to global market failures such as trade barriers and ruinous competition . The WTO is essential in promoting equitable trade practices and in settling disputes.

The WTO system is intended to facilitate the flow of trade. It seeks to establish an equitable trading system among developed and developing countries. This means implementing rules that will ensure that trade is fair, stable, predictable and transparent.

The WTO provides the forum for negotiating liberalization. It also provides the rules for how liberalization can take place, and a venue for dispute settlement. Guided by the rules of the WTO, member countries bargain with each other on how low trade barriers should go. Their negotiating positions depend on how ready they feel they are to lower the barriers, and on what they want to obtain from other members in return.

Over three quarters of WTO members are developing or least-developed countries. Freer trade means great adjustment costs for these countries. Thus, all WTO agreements contain special provision for them, including longer time periods to implement agreements and commitments, measures to increase their trading opportunities and support to help them build the infrastructure for WTO work, handle disputes, and implement technical standards. The provisions are intended to help local producers adjust to the demands of freer trade.

A WTO committee on trade and development, assisted by a sub-committee on least-developed countries, looks at developing countries’ special needs. It is responsible for the implementation of the agreements, technical cooperation, and the increased participation of developing countries in the global trading system

In sum, the WTO system aims to be:

• Non-discriminating — a country should not discriminate between its trading partners (they are all, equally, granted “most-favored-nation” or MFN status); and it should not discriminate between its own and foreign products, services or nationals (they are given “national treatment”).
• Freer — with barriers coming down through negotiation
• Predictable — foreign companies, investors and governments should be confident that trade barriers (including tariffs, non-tariff barriers and other measures) should not be raised arbitrarily; more and more tariff rates and market-opening commitments are “bound” in the WTO.
• More competitive — by discouraging “unfair” practices such as export subsidies and dumping products at below cost to gain market share.
• More beneficial for less developed countries — by giving them more time to adjust, greater flexibility, and special privileges.

The WTO can be beneficial to countries, but it requires their participation. Negotiation is the game. The countries are the players. The WTO is the referee. The referee cannot do anything if the players refuse to play. But nothing fruitful will come about if countries refuse to come to the negotiating table. When talks collapse, it does not mean that there is something wrong with the game or with the arbiter. It only means that the players are not very good at playing the game.

Issues to Consider:

Equalization of Production Costs

Free trade promotes greater capital and labor mobility. According to the Heckscher-Ohlin model, free trade will cause nations to export goods that use their most abundant factors of production and import goods that use their scarce factor of production.

An important implication of the Heckscher-Ohlin model is that trade equalizes factor prices across different countries. It tends to increase the demand for factors of production in relative abundance and decrease the demand for factors of production relatively scarce in a country.

As trade increases, the demand for capital-intensive goods increases in a capital-intensive country, and the price of capital will rise. As the demand for capital rises, the demand for labor will decrease, causing the price of labor to fall. The process happens in reverse in labor-intensive countries.

Adjustment Costs

Freer trade will cause a dislocation of workers in an industry in a country that does not have a comparative advantage relative to another country in that industry. The workers from these firms face job loss as production of their product shifts to another country. These workers can be retrained for a different industry, but this takes time and is difficult for older workers near retirement.

To soften the blow countries have tended to phase out trade barriers. The transition is made slowly over time, so that workers from the declining industry can retrain or retire over time, and so that firms will not go bankrupt at the initiation of free trade.

For example, AFTA has a scheme called the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT), which aims to lower tariffs in stages. In some cases, tariffs will be cut 25% after one year, 50% after 5 years, and 100% after 10 years. This gradual phasing out of tariffs will allow production to shift from one industry to another more slowly. But phasing in free trade also has a cost. It will take years to gain all of the benefits of free trade. This period of transition may be necessary politically, but it does have an important disadvantage.

Infant Industries

It is argued that temporary trade restrictions are required to protect infant industries from foreign competition while they are establishing themselves. Old mature industries argue that they need time to restructure. However, in most cases, these industries simply want permission to continue business as usual. Greater levels of competition will force firms to either become more efficient or to shut down. To many firms, neither of these options are desirable.

Political and Social Issues

Political and social issues make further trade liberalization in both advanced and developing countries difficult. Unemployment is a major concern. To become more efficient and to save on costs, firms are trying to cut down on labor. Many workers are being laid off. As firms grow and GDP increases, the rate of unemployment also increases. The number of newly unemployed due to rationalization will outweigh the number of newly employed due to the growth of firms. This is the so-called “growth without employment increase”. Naturally, workers will lobby against free trade and politicians will become reluctant to liberalize it.

The problem of unequal distribution of welfare gains is another matter that generates concern. On one extreme there are people who want to secure the equality in opportunity, and on the other there are people who want to see the equality in results. From the social stability point of view, there is a need to compromise and decide the appropriate combination between the two. The combination will depend on the values and priorities of each nation and is a matter which politicians will have to resolve.

Politicians may have vested interests in protecting certain industries. They may protect those which receive great social sympathy for the sake of social and political stability

Protectionist policies are sometimes necessary to help countries make the difficult transition to free trade. They're not necessarily intended to prohibit or reduce trade but are sometimes adopted as temporary measures to deal with adjustment costs and give infant industries a chance to modernize and be competitive. Trade agreements must be negotiated to keep trade barriers within reasonable limits, and powerful economies must not retaliate against weaker economies whose trade barriers stay within agreed limits.

Oligopolistic Competition

Free trade, the reduction of transportation cost and the progress of information technology has increased the incidences of oligopolistic competition. More and more multinational corporations are being formed as the number of new mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships between companies increases. Domestic companies in developing countries are more likely to be assimilated by multinationals. Mergers between domestic companies are also being formed to help domestic more oligopolistic. companies compete with multinationals. In this way, the market is becoming In such situation, trade may not be mutually beneficial to all countries involved. Some countries may lose from trade. Oligopolistic competition increase the possibility that workers will suffer. The distribution of value added between capital and labor will tend to move in the unfavorable direction for labor.

Increased Instability in the Regional (and World) Economy

The combination of trade liberalization, capital investment liberalization, and revolution in the information technology increases the instability of the world economy.

Trade liberalization has brought about greater interdependence among nations. Thus, small countries can be adversely affected by the economic shocks elsewhere. Free capital transaction, the quick acquisition of common knowledge through Internet and the financial engineering based on information technology are being blamed to a considerable extent for the Asian financial crisis.

The phenomenon of “herding” is particularly hazardous. Perfect information is not a realistic assumption, and most people and companies act based on limited information. Their sources of information are often secondary and not always reliable. In the case of Asian financial crisis, rating companies provided misleading information. Information exists in an asymmetric way in many cases. All these factors increase the instability of the regional – and world – economy.

Environmental Concerns

Free trade can have environmentally hazardous effects. The rapid industrialization through export promotion policies has increased air and water pollution in many developing countries. The exploitation of natural resources to meet high demand is damaging the different countries’ ecosystems. Also, free trade facilitates the mobility of environmentally harmful commodities. Fifteen of the fast track commodities under AFTA’s CEPT are environmentally harmful. Because economic development is often prioritized over environmental preservation and because the costs of environmental degradation is not factored into the price of products, free trade cannot address this problem. Thus governments must intervene with appropriate policies. These policies may take the form of trade tariffs or non-trade barriers such as the implementation of rules and regulations regarding standards.

Globalization and New Ways of Thinking About Security

Globalization has brought about the expansion of interaction processes, forms of organization, and forms of cooperation between both state and non-state actors. The conditions of interdependence and interpenetration have made national and global security more complicated than ever before. “Security decisions increasingly take place outside the traditional purview of sovereignty. Globalization creates an interpenetration of foreign and domestic issues that national governments must recognize in developing policy.”¹

The traditional approach to security is concerned with the protection of a state’s territorial integrity, political independence and sovereignty against “external” military threats under state control. The current security discourse, however, goes beyond state-centric analysis and military threats and examines the political, economic, social and environmental dimensions of security as well as the many linkages between them. It considers such issues as the plight of children in armed conflict, terrorism, trafficking in arms, narcotics and people, the spread of infectious diseases, and cross-border environmental depredations. This approach, which considers a wide range of human challenges, is known as the non-traditional approach.

The non-traditional approach is a critique of the traditional approach, but it is not necessarily in opposition to state sovereignty and national security. The state remains the central provider of security in ideal circumstances. The approach does, however, suggest that traditional security does not necessarily correlate with all the dimensions of the security of people, and that over-emphasis upon statist security can be detrimental to human security needs. Traditional conceptions of state security are a necessary but not sufficient condition for human survival.²

Non-traditional security does not include all health, welfare and development challenges. These issues become security concerns when they reach crisis point, when they undermine and diminish the survival changes of a significant number of people and when they threaten the stability and integrity of society.³

Non-traditional security issues can blur the lines between internal and external security. Their effects can spill over territorial borders and cause a range of wider security threats and sources of instability or otherwise disrupt international markets. Thus, they are very much an international concern and require international cooperation among a range of actors, including non-state actors.

Global Interest vs. National Interest

The global interest can be understood as the common good of the international community. Environmental protection, freer trade, respect for human rights, peace and security are part of the common good, because they are in the interest of all members of the international community. Thus, there is no clash between the global interest and national interests. What is good for the international community is good for the nations that comprise it.

However, this is not necessarily true the other way around. What nations perceive to be in their national interests may not coincide with what is in the global interest. For example, when nations go to war, they perceive war to be in their national interest. War, however, is not in the global interest.

The global interest is difficult to achieve because nations have a wide array of interests, and some of them are in direct opposition to each other. The distribution of power among states in the international system is uneven, and some states have greater capacity to achieve their ends. Some gain at the expense of others. This arrangement could potentially lead to instability and conflict.

Nations can choose to align their policies with the global interest, or they can chose to pursue their interests single-mindedly. It is up to the state whether it wants to compromise or not. If the state chooses to ignore the global interest in pursuit of its national interest, then conflict will inevitable arise. Disregarding the global interest in pursuing national interests, however, can only be detrimental to the nation.

____________________
¹ Philippe Legrain, Open World: The Truth About Globalisation, Abacus, Great Britain, 2002
² Victor D. Cha, “Globalization and the Study of International Security”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 3. (May, 2000), pp. 391-403
³ Ramesh Thakur, “Non-traditional security in Asia Introduction,” in Broadening Asia's Security Discourse and Agenda: Political, Social, and Environmental Perspectives eds. Edward Newman and Ramesh Thakur (New York: United Nations University Press, 2004)
⁴ Ibid.