Winners
FIRST PERSON By Alex Magno
The Philippine Star 12/01/2005
There are moments, they say, that separate the men from the boys. Then, perhaps, there are also times that separate winners from losers.
This week, we are looking at two big winners – and a couple of really bad losers.
The biggest winner, obviously, is the Philippine athletic effort at the SEA Games.
In the first few days of the Games, the Philippine medal haul is immensely better than expected. After many years languishing as a mediocre athletic presence in a region of dynamic economies and proud countries, our athletes competed this year with great skill and great will.
Credit must be given where it is due.
It is not too fashionable, we know, to credit First Gentleman Mike Arroyo for anything good. But we must break the fashion and cheer the innovations he brought to our athletics community.
For years, we complained that we simply did not have the resources to train our athletes to be the best they could possibly be. Our sports establishment is fissured, heavily bureaucratized and sometimes corrupt.
It still is: see what happened to the basketball event.
But what Mike Arroyo did last year helped us overcome the limitations of the existing sports establishment. He gathered businessmen – regardless of their aptitude for any physical activity – and farmed out the various teams to their care.
Each event, each competing team, had a ninong – a person of some means and with lots of patriotism so that he could help underwrite the costs of training and equipment. As a result, no team was neglected. Each team had a patron willing to spend for the bragging rights a gold medal brings.
The sum of it all is that this year’s Team Philippines is well-prepared, adequately equipped and properly fed. The field of talents we deployed for this game was carefully selected and thoroughly drilled. In addition, financial incentives are being offered for medals won.
This is capitalism in the service of sports; the anti-thesis to the former socialist sports juggernaut the Soviet Union, when it was there, maintained at state expense.
We have de-bureaucratized the sports establishment. The harvest of medals is a measure of the success of that experiment.
The other big winner is the Philippine peso. Our currency is now Asia’s strongest performer.
At precisely the moment that the dollar – powered by recent interest rate hikes by the Fed – is gaining over most other currencies, the peso is gaining over that powerhouse currency.
This is happening despite the substantially larger amount in hard currency we have to shell out because of the high oil price regime. It is happening despite a higher than programmed inflation rated. It is happening despite all the political troubles we went through the past few months. It is happening despite a weaker-than-expected economic performance for the third quarter.
Two things explain the peso’s gravity-defying performance.
First, the inflow of remittances is higher than expected. Although we have less workers abroad today, they have tended to be better skilled and better paid.
The robust flow of remittances is fueling domestic consumption – the biggest driver of our economic expansion. Strong domestic consumption demand is happening even as our consumers are only slightly less pessimistic about future earnings.
Second, the political will demonstrated by the Arroyo administration in implementing the EVAT raised the confidence of the investor community. That improved confidence explains why our stock market is hot – so hot it is now the region’s best performing capital market.
Our economy has a lot of idle capacity and undervalued assets. Unless we start shooting ourselves in the foot again with our crazy politics, there should be enough absorptive capacity to ensure the investment flow continues. That will help us create jobs and bring down poverty rates.
As in sports, we ought to rely more in the private sector to solve our problems. If we continue doing that, and contain politics to the margins, we should be better off.
Must we look at the losers? Isn’t that a waste of time?
Well, let’s look at just one – although this one perfectly summarizes the dark underside of our national being.
The other day, completely unprovoked, Bayan Muna’s Satur Ocampo declared that he and the forlorn community of ideological dinosaurs he represents would rather have Joseph Estrada as leader of the country.
Unless my memory now fails me, I distinctly remember Satur and his leftist horde demanding Estrada’s resignation while the latter was president. At the height of Edsa Dos, he and his horde broke away from the main forces of the uprising and, in a vain attempt to steal the insurrection, marched towards the Palace.
While they marched away, however, a new government was installed. Instead of stealing the insurrection, they ended up excluded from it – just as it happened when the leftist groups boycotted the 1986 elections and found themselves excluded from the Edsa Revolution.
Now Satur wants to rewind history, perhaps to re-edit their role in past events. Or maybe to install a less tenacious foe than the one they find themselves trying to unseat at the moment.
Maybe Satur and his horde have been marching too often in the hot sun, shoulder to shoulder with the remnants of previously deposed regimes. Or maybe losers just naturally gravitate towards each other.
FIRST PERSON By Alex Magno
The Philippine Star 12/01/2005
There are moments, they say, that separate the men from the boys. Then, perhaps, there are also times that separate winners from losers.
This week, we are looking at two big winners – and a couple of really bad losers.
The biggest winner, obviously, is the Philippine athletic effort at the SEA Games.
In the first few days of the Games, the Philippine medal haul is immensely better than expected. After many years languishing as a mediocre athletic presence in a region of dynamic economies and proud countries, our athletes competed this year with great skill and great will.
Credit must be given where it is due.
It is not too fashionable, we know, to credit First Gentleman Mike Arroyo for anything good. But we must break the fashion and cheer the innovations he brought to our athletics community.
For years, we complained that we simply did not have the resources to train our athletes to be the best they could possibly be. Our sports establishment is fissured, heavily bureaucratized and sometimes corrupt.
It still is: see what happened to the basketball event.
But what Mike Arroyo did last year helped us overcome the limitations of the existing sports establishment. He gathered businessmen – regardless of their aptitude for any physical activity – and farmed out the various teams to their care.
Each event, each competing team, had a ninong – a person of some means and with lots of patriotism so that he could help underwrite the costs of training and equipment. As a result, no team was neglected. Each team had a patron willing to spend for the bragging rights a gold medal brings.
The sum of it all is that this year’s Team Philippines is well-prepared, adequately equipped and properly fed. The field of talents we deployed for this game was carefully selected and thoroughly drilled. In addition, financial incentives are being offered for medals won.
This is capitalism in the service of sports; the anti-thesis to the former socialist sports juggernaut the Soviet Union, when it was there, maintained at state expense.
We have de-bureaucratized the sports establishment. The harvest of medals is a measure of the success of that experiment.
The other big winner is the Philippine peso. Our currency is now Asia’s strongest performer.
At precisely the moment that the dollar – powered by recent interest rate hikes by the Fed – is gaining over most other currencies, the peso is gaining over that powerhouse currency.
This is happening despite the substantially larger amount in hard currency we have to shell out because of the high oil price regime. It is happening despite a higher than programmed inflation rated. It is happening despite all the political troubles we went through the past few months. It is happening despite a weaker-than-expected economic performance for the third quarter.
Two things explain the peso’s gravity-defying performance.
First, the inflow of remittances is higher than expected. Although we have less workers abroad today, they have tended to be better skilled and better paid.
The robust flow of remittances is fueling domestic consumption – the biggest driver of our economic expansion. Strong domestic consumption demand is happening even as our consumers are only slightly less pessimistic about future earnings.
Second, the political will demonstrated by the Arroyo administration in implementing the EVAT raised the confidence of the investor community. That improved confidence explains why our stock market is hot – so hot it is now the region’s best performing capital market.
Our economy has a lot of idle capacity and undervalued assets. Unless we start shooting ourselves in the foot again with our crazy politics, there should be enough absorptive capacity to ensure the investment flow continues. That will help us create jobs and bring down poverty rates.
As in sports, we ought to rely more in the private sector to solve our problems. If we continue doing that, and contain politics to the margins, we should be better off.
Must we look at the losers? Isn’t that a waste of time?
Well, let’s look at just one – although this one perfectly summarizes the dark underside of our national being.
The other day, completely unprovoked, Bayan Muna’s Satur Ocampo declared that he and the forlorn community of ideological dinosaurs he represents would rather have Joseph Estrada as leader of the country.
Unless my memory now fails me, I distinctly remember Satur and his leftist horde demanding Estrada’s resignation while the latter was president. At the height of Edsa Dos, he and his horde broke away from the main forces of the uprising and, in a vain attempt to steal the insurrection, marched towards the Palace.
While they marched away, however, a new government was installed. Instead of stealing the insurrection, they ended up excluded from it – just as it happened when the leftist groups boycotted the 1986 elections and found themselves excluded from the Edsa Revolution.
Now Satur wants to rewind history, perhaps to re-edit their role in past events. Or maybe to install a less tenacious foe than the one they find themselves trying to unseat at the moment.
Maybe Satur and his horde have been marching too often in the hot sun, shoulder to shoulder with the remnants of previously deposed regimes. Or maybe losers just naturally gravitate towards each other.
-anben-
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