The idiocy of Philippine politics!

These days, it is the Bersamin murder, fruit of a simmering political war in Abra, hogging the front pages of Philippine newspapers, which cannot seem to get enough--or sell enough--of political violence and celebrity murders. When I wrote this editorial in 1995, the disputed territory was Nueva Ecija; the protagonists, the Josons and the Perezes.

At various times since our independence as a nation, other running stories headlined bloody details of shooting wars in political hot spots, involving other political clans. The return of democracy may have rid us of a dictator, but it has not rid us of aspiring future dictators. Politics has become a family business worth staking an eternal claim to, worth protecting with real lives, worth feeding with the lives of others who stupidly involve themselves and get in the way of crossed ambitions.

Perhaps the Bersamin murder will end the vicious bloodshed in Abra. Perhaps it will not. Who knows what lies deep in men's hearts? If they were really good men, wanting only to help their townspeople and provincemates, would they go into politics? And having gone into it and wallowed in the best and the worst of it, wouldn't they kill to stay in it? We'd be stupid if we didn't know the answer to that.

____________________

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue or 26 April 1995

The statement is stark and needs no further explanation: there are more than 2,000 firearms still loose in Nueva Ecija.

Do we wonder that an encounter such as the one that exploded between Governor Joson and Mayor Perez on Saturday afternoon could take place? In broad daylight? Before an election? When a gun ban is supposed to be in force?

Is this not the ultimate insult for an electorate that, like the world's worst fools, never stops wishing and praying for fair and free polls every election year? That never stops hoping that the baseline of "keeping the peace" will at least be met by people in authority?

How dare a PNP regional director calmly announce that they have allowed 2,000 firearms to remain loose in an acknowledged political hot spot?

We are told the protagonists in the violent encounter had their armed bodyguards exempted from the election gun ban. Given the bloody history of these two families' decades-old feud, how could the Comelec have allowed such a situation to prevail?

Anybody could see it was a murder waiting to be committed--by one, by two, by both, by anybody! Allowing them all to carry firearms, when everybody knew that emotions would be running high and vengeance would go to the fast and not necessarily to the just (as who can still trace who is the just in such a convoluted tale of only-less-than-Shakespearean length?), would have been the height of naivete. After the Espinosa ambush, the dice would already have been loaded against peace in such violent terrains.

As, indeed, it turned out to be: a gruesome killing scene played out against a faux-Hollywood landscape.

Except that, in this case, there is very real blood, very real killing, very frightening violence. And the perpetuation of a feud that can go on until the end of the world. The widow takes up the gauntlet, the brothers plot out their countermoves, and the followers--yes, the unthinking followers--line up, there on the highways and the town plazas of their hometown, like cowboys in a forgotten Western, to willingly sacrifice their lives, their families, and their future on the altar of politics.

We are told the whole scenario is unavoidable. We are told the debts have to be paid, the revenge to be extracted, the future to be plotted out by feuding political warlords because that is the nature of the lives they have been fated to live out.

Was it also unavoidable that our police officials should allow loose firearms in the thousands in Nueva Ecija, scattered like kites waiting to be picked up by boys pretending they are men and leaders? Was it also unavoidable that the Comelec should join in the macabre fun and give such violence-prone politicians the authority that the very possession of metal gives so they can freely stage their own bloody games?

No wonder the "bad boy of Philippine movies" has the gall to offer himself for election to national office! In his natural habitat, he begins to look no more infantile than the rest of everybody else. He may even reap the whirlwind from this cardboard scene.

The idiocy of Philippine politics!

-- NBT

Food picture 1995

Organization, consolidation, planning, management: these are not our strong points as a people. We lack a forward, future view. We do not care for anticipation, originality of approach, ingenuity. We don't talk about global issues until they stare us in the face, or on TV and the Internet. We are not only insular in orientation, we also do not care for full-scale, full-time study and specialization.

If we expect doctors to devote their whole lives to continuing study in their specialized fields, why shouldn't we demand the same from economists, government administrators, public officials, urban planners, scientists, academicians, and everybody else--including industrialists and capitalists--with a responsibility toward the efficient running of the various threads of national life?

And don't we have the right to demand that if they fail to measure up, then they should be exposed for the lightweights that they are and immediately dismissed?

____________________

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 21 August 1995

First came the pork crisis, followed by the rice shortage. Then, problems with sugar and bangus fry. Now, we're getting warnings about a future shortage of cattle stock.

There's also red tide in our seas, pollution in our lakes and bays. For a while, vegetables were reported to be laced with formalin. Price controls were imposed on basic necessities as prices rose. Will our food problems never cease?

Remember that importing is a palliative, and a costly one at that, depriving us of substantial foreign exchange and driving the wedge of fear into the hearts of local manufacturers, who will be pursued by nightmares till the dawn of global free (not to be equated with fair) trade.

So the government is run off its feet trying to douse brush fires as and where they ignite. Senators storm rice warehouses, mobile stores sell cheap rice to kilometer-long queues, and politicians have a field day getting "shot" for the front pages of the dailies while dispensing NFA rice.

The government has now started daily nationwide inventories of basic goods, while the private sector does its own thing by sending out volunteers to do price monitoring.

With President Fidel V. Ramos out of the country, his justice secretary, Teofisto Guingona, has ordered the National Bureau of Investigation to look into a possible collusion between the National Food Authority and members of the country's rice cartel, the existence of which everybody (except perhaps Agriculture Secretary Roberto Sebastian and NFA Chairman Romeo David) knows.

Will somebody please provide us all with true, real, and authoritative national food production and consumption figures for the whole of the Philippines for 1994 and 1995? And has the government projected food production and consumption versus population, at least for the immediate years to come?

Or will 1996 and the rest of our future, just like our food picture circa 1995, be left to the far from tender mercies of the usual suspects: unplanned growth, unprepared development, uninformed bureaucrats?

-- NBT

Interesting facts of development

Emerging markets, regional growth areas, food crises, poverty, microlending. These were development concerns a decade ago. They are still development concerns today.

Asia was hot in the late 1980s--including the Philippines, which the CEO of the global trade publishing house I was working for at the time described, as they moved a whole group's editorial base from Hong Kong to Manila, as "an exciting place; it reminds me of Hong Kong 20 years ago." Unfortunately, Manila was supplanted barely five years after, before even the 2000s, by Shenzhen and, very soon after, by the rest of China.

Now, China has ceased to be emerging to the world, only to the people in its rural areas who have yet to get to the veritable dream factories that are Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and practically every other Chinese city.

The late 1990s were coming-out years for Africa, energized by a very supportive Pax Europeana. But in Africa's wake came the wars, the droughts, the violence, the displacement of peoples. Bono had to stage world concerts to raise funds for the continent while George Clooney and Don Cheadle used their star value to call attention to the painful tragedy of Darfur.

One hopes, more than anything else, that the affluent and influential in every country will use their ginormous resources on projects that will truly teach the poor how to rise above their situation.

Unfortunately, most of the time, the rich and powerful prefer to wear shades that allow them to disregard the poverty around them even as they rally for more abstract, more personal, or more vengeful concerns.

____________________

Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper
Issue of 28 September 1995

At the opening of the Philippine summit yesterday, President Ramos cautioned summit participants about the possibility that they could miss the Philippine bus. However, our bus isn't the only one poised to depart. In this part of the world, even Burma is dusting off its rickety old wagon for the long trip to economic development.

There are, of course, trillions of dollars flying electronically through the capital markets of the world, but short-term deposits and no-commitment investors can spell doom rather than boom, as Mexico has sadly learned in past months.

The kind of investors we need are those who, like James Rogers Jr. said of the country he has chosen to sink his dollars into: "There is a chance it could explode ... But that wouldn't cause me to sell." Unfortunately, Rogers--who teaches finance at Columbia University, is a business commentator on the CNBC cable network, and was a former partner of Hungarian billionaire investor George Soros--wasn't talking about the Philippines. Rogers was talking about Africa, the latest, much ballyhooed emerging market.

At a forum for American investment bankers at the New York Stock Exchange, Rogers downgraded Latin America ("sure to devalue"), Asia ("not as hot as it was"), and Russia and Eastern Europe ("too much in turmoil"). Africa is "it. I'm the biggest fan of Africa in the room," said Rogers. "Whether you're a hairdresser or an investment banker, things are so exciting."

Rogers said he has investments throughout the continent--Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana--though South Africa is particularly hot. Of course, there are problem spots: Nigeria, Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola. But the secret in making market choices, said Rogers, is the people: "You don't invest in a country unless the people have changed."

A lesson there for us, surely?

******

Despite Rogers' spirited promotion of Africa, one cannot just dismiss Asia. Not the capital cities, this time, but the former-backwaters-turned-aspiring-growth-areas. There's EAGA down south, and another one up north.

The latest to make a pitch for growth is a six-nation stretch through which one of the longest rivers in the world runs. The Mekong six--China, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Vietnam, and Cambodia--have called attention to the vast investment potential of this relic of Vietnam-war memories.

The area through which the river runs is perhaps one of the most remote and untouched territories in Asia. Only its Vietnam portion, the Mekong Delta, shows any sign of development because the Vietcong needed the area to help fund their war bill. Only one bridge, the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, spans the 4,350-kilometer waterway.

Now, with the help of the Asian Development Bank, the Mekong six want to finalize a framework of cooperation that will provide a road network all along the Mekong River basin. Eventually, a package of tourism and hydroelectric projects may be offered to investors.

Growth areas are mushrooming throughout Asia, bringing countries and governments together in a common pursuit. But the effort can be altogether dangerous, leading to mistakes that impact most, and worst, on the very people targeted as beneficiaries of development. At every step of such undertakings, there must be one running thread, one enduring guideline: sustainable growth.

******

A real wheat crisis may well have begun, with the scramble for supplies spurring panic buying, especially by African countries where bread is the staple. Even as wheat stocks reached their lowest levels in 20 years, prices shot through the roof at the Chicago futures pit, the world's largest wheat market.

Egypt, the world's second biggest wheat importer, snapped up American wheat and is eyeing Australian wheat ready for harvest in December. Algeria and Jordan need wheat by November; drought-hit Morocco, by December.

With production of other cereals similarly projected at levels well below what is required, the time may have come for all countries to encourage paradigm shifts in the production and consumption of food.

******

On another subject I had touched on a few times in the past--small loans for women--here are the latest so far.

In Cambodia, the sponsoring organization--the US Agency for International Development--will be funneling the funds through the Catholic Relief Services, which in turn will work with three district-based nongovernmental organizations to provide loans to rural women through 78 village banks. Cambodian women will be charged rates of 4-5 percent per month against loan-shark rates of 20-30 percent.

In China, one remote district bank in the northwest, a branch of the state-owned Agricultural Bank of China, has been pioneering in the concept and attesting to the high rate of repayment. "Shanxi is the first ... province to give cheap loans to rural women who live in poor counties to help them become better off," said Yan Dianshan, vice chairman of the Women's Federation of Shanxi.

Launched as early as 1989, the program is a little different from the Grameen Bank and Women's World Banking (WWB) models. "We usually do not give money directly to poor women," said Yan. "We give them chicks, rabbits, piglets, and other materials to make it easy for them to repay. Or we lend money to better-off women responsible for poverty-relief work for poorer women." The loans, in cash or kind, carry a 2.4-percent interest and are repaid in three years.

The nonprofit WWB has found low-income women the best credit risk in the world. "Their repayment rate is 95-98 percent, better than that of large clients of commercial banks," said WWB's president, Nancy Barry, who was in Beijing for last month's women's conference.

So dedicated is Barry to the concept of micro-lending that she has been trying to negotiate through the obscure Chinese structure, attempting to find a route by which to expand WWB into China.

-- NBT

Have we learned the lessons of war?

On hindsight, this should have been titled "Haven't we learned the lessons of war?"

How long did it take the US to get out of Vietnam? Did the US have the moral right to invade Vietnam? Now the US is in Iraq. Did the US have the moral right to invade Iraq? And they are surprised that unspeakable violence is spawned by wars?

____________________

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 28 April 1995

For practically the whole of April, and maybe even well into May, morning newspapers, as well as The Evening Paper, ran reminiscences, eyewitness accounts, analyses, and investigations of the personalities, events, and situations that led to the culmination of two of this century's most gut-wrenching conflicts: World War II and the Vietnam War.

The first observes this month the 50th anniversary of its end, the second the 20th. Both wars seared the affected generations as never before, and set into motion global reactions of unparalleled proportions.

World War II carved up the European continent according to ideological, rather than racial or geographic, lines. It also propelled the world into a new economic structure, with the United States on top of the totem pole, followed by the very powers that lost militarily but triumphed economically: Germany and Japan.

The Vietnam War caused the United States to undergo a spiritual catharsis as painful as the emotional one, and endangered the very stability and sanity of the American people. Today, US assumption of the leading role in another war not its own has put in question its moral authority over the rest of the world.

At the risk of being repetitive, we hope everybody will take these twin anniversaries as occasion to remember a wise man's warning: that those who do not know their history are bound to repeat it.

These days, all over the world, wars continue. People die, combatants as well as civilians. Governments order whole-scale decimation of rival communities, rival societies. Armaments of war are sold, transported, used. New and more potent weapons are invented, developed, stored. If guns and bombs cannot guarantee the death of the enemy, then the human body itself is employed, the ultimate death weapon.

At no other time in the history of the world have so many people been so committed to the ends of war, bloodshed, violence.

Such commitment will not necessarily lead to a war of such magnitude as World War II or of such anguish as the Vietnam War. But commitment of such intensity is bound to divide the human race according to even more complex lines.

Where nation-states no longer command loyalty; where ideology, race, and religion get pitted against each other; where the common weal no longer reigns supreme, the lines blur and the conflicts multiply.

The hopes for peace that flowered with the end of the Cold War are already wilting under regimes controlled by intense and unmitigated hatred. And where no power--superpower or superorganization--is able to wield moral authority, the future routes and forms that war can take become truly frightening.

Is this the world mankind went through three major wars in this century to shape? Is this the kind of world we want to leave to the generations of the 21st century?

-- NBT

Thank you, Abe Peck

As you go over this column piece, you will read Abe Peck's credentials in full. But let me tell you the circumstances surrounding the short but meaningful (to me, anyway!) connection between Abe and me.

I had just voluntarily closed one more chapter in my seemingly strike-anywhere media career--this time as regional executive editor of a lifestyle magazine with Asian editorial and marketing offices--when I saw a classified advertisement for an editor with experience in managing a regional editorial network. My application actually traveled a circuitous route, which I plan to detail in another of my three blogs. The net result was that I was recruited into the extremely challenging world of global trade journalism.

It was, looking on my whole career in hindsight, the most exciting phase of my intellectual growth. I never thought my brain cells could soak up so much primary, secondary, tertiary, peripheral data, details, knowledge, information, even rumor. Never in my history of working for local media did I ever feel as intellectually alive as when I was editor of one of the global sourcing magazines of an international trade media group.

Abe Peck made it easier for somebody like me, who built an OK enough name in the world of local mainstream media, to do acceptable work in the more faceless, more demanding, more information-overloaded but definitely less-byline-conscious discipline that is trade journalism.

And by the way, look at the magazines on the shelves of our local bookstores today. Most of the titles you will see are titles that confirm what Abe Peck and his fellow first-world journalism professors teach: There is no substitute for studying, knowing, focusing on, and targeting your subject area and your potential market before and during the life of your magazine. Then perhaps you will not have to worry about your magazine's after-life.

____________________

Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper
Issue of 16 November 1995

It was the first week of November in 1992 and the fourth day of a week-long editorial training seminar. I had doodled my way through the first day, when editors of the different publications delivered their annual state-of-the-magazine speeches. A series of talks by publishers and top honchos followed on the second and third days. Except for the insights on repositioning, redesigning, and regionalizing magazines, I had found no other subjects worth staying awake for.

Outside the French doors of the second-floor function room at the Hong Kong Marina Club, a balcony overlooked the posh yachts elegantly taking in the sun on Aberdeen's calm waters. My eyes were often turned to the looming hulk of earth nearby, bluish-green and lush with trees, where every now and then I would seek the thin ribbon of brown wound around the mountain, evidence of human life even at such imperial heights.

I wished urgently for a day out in the bracing mountain air and sun instead of endless hours listening to lectures on subjects I always thought any journalist knew as well as his name and occupation: improving your headlines, writing attention-getting subheads and blurbs, captions and their relationship to pictures.

By the fourth day, I had reached the end of my patience. Seeking a whispered moment with the seminar director, I asked him almost desperately: "Abe, will you please explain to me why we are discussing topics we--all the editors here--should have mastered in journalism school?"

******

Learning from a former colleague early this week that Abe Peck was in town, I knew I had to write this little piece about him. I can hear your questions: Who is Abe Peck? Abe who?

Abe Peck is a professor at Northwestern University in Illinois, chairman of magazine studies at the University's Medill School of Journalism, and director of the National Arts Journalism Program sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Those credentials, while impressive enough, are only three items in his long and glorious CV.

As magazine studies chairman at Medill, he directs six full-time professors and about 10 adjunct instructors. I know Abe enough to say that his baby is the graduate magazine-publishing program, which shapes, directs, instructs, and babysits graduate students through the critical business of launching original publications.

But Abe is more than the magazine program at Medill. He teaches the graduate program's writing and editing course, is a member of the dean's strategic planning committee and the school's curriculum, search, and promotion and tenure committees. Every year, together with the school's placement office, he hosts Medill's annual Magazine Jobs Fair.

Outside Medill, Abe Peck's byline has appeared in such magazines as Rolling Stone (where he has been associate or contributing editor since 1975), Esquire, GQ, Advertising Age, Library Quarterly. He has been or is still consultant to, organizes workshops and seminars for, is strategic and editorial adviser to, or serves on the advisory boards of the ABA Journal, American Medical News, Cahners Publishing, Crain Communications, Eaton Corp., Johnson Hill Press, Kalmbach Publishing, Restaurants and Institutions, Abbott Laboratories, Eastman Kodak, Whittle Communications, The Smithsonian, Cowles Magazines, Asian Sources Media Group, and a slew of US national and regional editors', magazines', and publishers' associations.

He has judged for both the National Magazine and Jesse Neal awards, and is an instructor on magazine startups for the Folio conference held annually in Chicago. Entries on Abe appear in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Education, and Who's Who in the World.

******

You say all that would have been easy to get from a two-page write-up. But more difficult, though certainly more lasting, were very personal lessons from three formal training sessions and informal sit-ins with Abe.

There I was at the Marina Club in 1992, feeling bored by all the discussions about things we all should have learned in journalism school, except that the British, Scottish, Indian, American, Chinese, and Filipino editors with me were not all journalism graduates: the majority, in fact, were technicians-- engineers, mechanics, IT and marketing executives.

It was not long after that November 1992 seminar that I admitted they may not know as much as I do about journalism, but they certainly knew more than I did about the industries our international magazines covered and, as a result, may have communicated more effectively with their readers.

Where many Filipino publications are weak is often where Filipino editors and publishers erroneously believe they are strong. Created from the feeble materials of whimsy, wish fulfillment, personal ambition, or a pipe dream, a new Filipino magazine makes a great, big splash at birth, only to die from an excess of misdirected and indiscriminate love only a few issues after. Others hang on, offsetting losses with profits from other businesses, but never quite making it to awards nights, citations of excellence, halls of fame--or readers' attention, either.

I remember one particular session, again on a beautiful November week, also at the Marina Club, but this time a year after, when Abe presented a video package of an original magazine launch by his students at Medill--for a catering magazine, I remember quite well.

Every step of the launch was documented, from the initial brainstorming, to the comprehensive industry study, to the series of market research surveys, to the circulation and advertising studies and surveys, to the preproduction and production runs. At every stage, the market was tested, reactions and responses were collected, statistics were interpreted, and very thorough presentations were made to the school and the staff. The editorial coverage was not simply the product of one man's mind or one woman's dreams; its roots were firmly planted on a firm mission statement and an educated and intelligent approach to an identified market.

******

Abe had answered the question I asked him, almost in desperation, that November day in 1992. Now, more than two years after, I have outgrown my journalistic indignation enough to accept it. Thank you, Abe Peck.

-- NBT

Keeping the peace

Filipino elections are notorious for the violence they spawn and the lives they waste. Even given the amount of vote-watching that has become a regular practice and the thousands of vote-defenders who volunteer every election time, no election passes in the country's calendar that does not toll the bell for many unfortunate souls, some even with sins as innocuous as simply wanting to indulge the Filipino vice of needing to be a bystander at every event.

I remember my mother telling me how peaceful elections were before World War II, and how the violence and deaths escalated only when Filipinos began to think they were really rulers in their own land. I think she may have been a victim of her fantasy. We just have to recall such illustrious names as Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Aguinaldo.

We're not even talking about the cheating, from lowly barangay elections to who knows what high-and-mighty level. And don't believe it when candidates insist only the other side cheats.

____________________

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 3 March 1995

Two months to go before national elections, and already the fires of dissension and fear have been more than adequately stoked. In many places, suspicions that the old practices of Philippine politics still reign supreme get bolstered, not just by dramatic events but even by brief, telling, statements.

The killing of Masbate Rep. Tito Espinosa three nights ago may have kept us glued to our radio and television sets to keep up with the details of the breaking story. How many of us, our adrenalin levels rising, sat down, at anytime that night and after, to move beyond the personal parameters of the story to the broader, more general truths behind it?

Everybody speculated--or declared themselves firmly convinced--that politics was behind the latest incident. Who does not know the running feud that has dogged well-entrenched members of the Espinosa family and their political rivals?

To think of this one family feud as a microcosm of politics, Philippine-style, and to imagine it replicated in every city and province in the country is almost mind-numbing. To those who grew up in politically prescient families, however, it is nevertheless very real.

For no other reason has the expression "guns, goons, and gold" become an accepted cliche when describing the Philippine electoral scene.

One likes to think it does not have to be so. Who would not want to be able to claim success in escaping the conditions that have spawned the wide, if passive, acceptance of that cliché? Who would not prefer a real restoration of respected democratic principles?

But as a nation, the thought seems quite unrealistic. Was it the other day when doubts were cast openly on Comelec Chairman Bernardo Pardo's grasp of the more practical aspects of Philippine politics? It makes us want to say: Hey, give the man a sporting chance!

There is, though, a grain of logic in the doubt. Presiding over the honest conduct of Philippine elections is no victory if it is done at the cost of human lives. The bottom line will always be that of keeping the peace.

-- NBT

Vietnam on a roll

If Filipinos want to indulge their masochistic sentiments and enjoy a long cry, they only have to look at Vietnam. In the '50s, in Asia, the Philippines was second only to Japan in economic and development potential. Even then, alarm bells should already have sounded for us. Japan, after all, was decimated by two atomic bombs. But we calmed ourselves then: the Philippines, too, was destroyed by a world war.

Today, we have, in a very real sense, been overtaken once more. And again by another war-torn country. Shall we console ourselves as we did before, look for excuses, and blame a rapacious dictatorship for our inability to get ahead? I did not hear the Vietnamese people officially blaming anybody--not the war, not the French, not the Americans, not the Vietcong, not the US-installed government in the South, nobody. They applied themselves to the task of picking up the pieces of a broken land and a divided people, decided to forgo the usual breast-beating and grudge-bearing, and forged today's Vietnamese miracle.

The rest of Indochina is running very close behind. The Laotians and Cambodians, no doubt inspired by the Vietnamese, are moving fast to catch up. Very soon, all of them will overtake hapless, divided, undisciplined, politicized, personalistic us.

This piece was written more than a decade ago. And yes, we have been overtaken.

____________________

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 19 April 1995

Once a world pariah, Vietnam is fast moving up the Asian trade totem pole. And guess which of the countries in the region Vietnam will soon overtake, given its new export energy.

Listen to these amazing statistics of 1995 first-quarter performance from the new boy on the world trade bloc. In the first three months of this year alone, Vietnam exported an estimated $940-million worth of goods, narrowing its quarterly trade deficit to only $85 million. Vietnam's total trade shortfall in 1994 was $900 million.

Clothing and textile exports in the first quarter of 1995 almost doubled from the same period in 1994. Coal exports rose by 56 percent and rice exports by 44 percent.

The value of Vietnam's industrial output increased by 12 percent during the first quarter of 1995, compared to the same period in 1994.

The country's most productive cities in the first three months of the year were Hanoi and Haiphong, the north's largest cities. Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, showed only modest but continuing gains.

Filipino manufacturers who want to know which Vietnamese exports are growing may take a hint from the manufactured goods with the highest increases in volume of output--light bulbs, animal feeds, textiles, bricks, cement. Output volumes for chemical fertilizers, canned vegetables, and frozen seafood decreased.

Now, these statistics would come to nothing unless we realize that, until less than three years ago, Vietnam as an exporter of acceptable goods was not even being considered by international markets.

For one, there was the active American campaign to keep Vietnamese trade on a tight embargo. For another, Vietnamese products were considered good only for domestic consumption.

Given the evidence of the above statistics, however, Vietnam appears to have leapfrogged its way to exporter status in world markets in the short space of three years. Exports worth $940 million in three months, even as an estimate, are nothing to look down on. In fact, for countries like the Philippines, which hopes to do well in the same race, Vietnam's figures should constitute a critical wake-up call.

Unless we decide we want to be an island unto ourselves--a seeming impossibility in a world that has become so small--the rest of 1995 should be, for the Philippines, serious catch-up time.

Do we want to be left behind again, another time?

-- NBT

New rivals in Asean

This year's summit of APEC leaders was held in Vietnam, proof if any were needed of the immense strides that country--still caught in a war seemingly without end as late as three decades ago--had taken in its efforts to harvest the fruits of capitalist progress. Indeed, Vietnam is today a progressive miniature of the Chinese model: a communist government, a capitalist-style economy.

Myanmar and Cambodia are also leaping all over, registering growth rates that leave the Philippine economy sputtering in frustration.

The reasons why we are being left behind by almost every other country in Asia are painfully obvious--but not to our politicians, and perhaps not even to the majority of the Filipino people. It is always easier to look for culprits elsewhere and never at ourselves.

____________________

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 27 July 1995

It may have escaped our attention, concentrated as we have been on domestic explosions--the developments in the Vizconde and Kuratong Baleleng cases, the continuing saga of Delia Maga and Flor Contemplacion, the May national elections, and the opening of the 10th Congress--that a few of our neighbors have been working very hard of late.

Virtually a procession of Asian hopefuls, earlier swearing to the evils of global trade, is now pounding the drums, spreading far and wide the challenge that they are ready to slug it out in the international marketplace with the best and the ablest of the giants.

Vietnam, the noisiest, has also been the most emotionally stirring, at least for two of the world's biggest consumer markets--the United States and the European Union. So we may as well be ready for the unrelenting flow of guilt money into this communist backwater.

Tomorrow, Vietnam will be accepted into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as the regional group's seventh member. Much is also being made of the fact that Vietnam, with a per-capita gross domestic product of $220, comes in as Asean's poorest member.

Perhaps not for long, though. Hanoi joins Asean with very high expectations. Increased regional trade and investment are expected to accompany Vietnam's entry into Asean. The Vietnamese government is also confident of its ability to work within the regional group's competitive framework, its rigid tariff-reduction schedules, and its year-2003 deadline for AFTA, the Asean Free Trade Area.

Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam speaks with combined market enthusiasm and pragmatism about his country's decision to join AFTA on January 1, 1996. Vietnam will reduce tariffs at its own pace, he announced. "I believe that with the creativity and skill of the Vietnamese people, and especially the Vietnamese business community, they will overcome all difficulties."

Earlier this week, an even bigger market enthusiastically welcomed Vietnam into the capitalist arena. After two years of negotiations, the European Union and Vietnam signed a landmark agreement defining new frameworks of cooperation in economic affairs, trade, investment, science and technology. Additional help is also promised Vietnam in other vital areas--accounting and auditing, intellectual property, quality standards--all hopefully leading to the establishment of a market economy in the country.

It is clear the Europeans can hardly contain their enthusiasm over the agreement, which they expect to provide them with what they want--a front seat in the development of one of the world's most promising new markets.

A spokesman for UNICE, an association of Europe's top companies, cooed: "For our industrialists, Vietnam is a very important emerging market."

Hardly to be outrun in any trade race is, of course, the United States. Last week, Washington--bowing to concerted lobbying by US business and industry--finally decided to extend diplomatic recognition to Vietnam, closing one of the most bitter chapters in the history of direct US military intervention in Asia.

For Vietnam, the diplomatic recognition is better than a birthday gift. It brings with it two components of a very welcome economic package: US investments that will significantly reduce Hanoi's dependence on the limited capital from regional investors like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia; and reduced import duties on Vietnamese products entering the US market, especially if Hanoi gets MFN (Most Favored Nation) status.

In 1994, Hanoi enjoyed limited--but nonetheless considerable--blessings from the United States. The lifting of the US trade embargo brought an inflow of $550-million worth of investment. Vietnamese exports to the United States, mainly coffee and fish, totaled $51.9 million. Expect the figures to rise by this time next year.

In fact, expect Vietnam to tally next year some of the most dramatic increases in all areas of global economic activity.

But this should not make us forget other aspiring Asian players, all seemingly engaged in the race of a lifetime. Myanmar, the former Burma, has not only played the first notes of a courting song aimed at Asean, but is also opening its doors to the rest of the world.

Nor is Cambodia to be ignored, either. For more than a year now, it has been actively advertising itself to foreign investors, hoping the lure of influence and power over a fledgling economy would make them prefer putting their money in Cambodia than anywhere else in the world. Phnom Penh can be forgiven for itching to get even just a little of the global funds that are moving so fast around the world. After all, keeping up with a neighbor--busy, buzzing, booming Thailand--can be a real frustration.

Furthermore, there is one giant about to emerge from its long sleep, the prospect of which is enough to ice Asian spines in fear. Inter-Korean business is still consigned to a misty future, but South Korean companies, especially the chaebols, are already sowing the seeds of possible light industrial production in the disciplined, manpower-rich, hungry north.

Our South Korean journalist friends, excitedly trumpeting the growth of a Korea united in trade if not in government, strike apprehension in our minds, enough to send us back to our original calculations in hopes of finding some magic way the Philippines can leap over a young, hungry, market-driven pack of new rivals.

-- NBT

Against violence

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 13 September 1995

Whatever time one goes home every day after work, it would be almost impossible to ignore the ubiquitous radio and its hourly, or half-hourly, newscast. The daily newspaper expands the reader's national vista, but the radio fills him with the excitement, the immediacy, the urgency of events as they happen from day to day.

But it is not radio's fault that those events, viewed from the perspective of months, even years, fill us with gut-wrenching visions of increasingly horrendous acts of violence. There was a time when all the excitement from radio newscasts was occasioned by typhoons, fires, and political rallies. Was it after martial rule that the air lanes came to know of a different kind of hair-raising excitement, this time from discoveries of dismembered or buried bodies, rapes and massacres and kidnappings, victims bloodied by lawmen's bullets or poleaxed by drug addicts, youngsters black and blue from maltreatment or dead from hazing?

Even the modus operandi for successful bank robberies now make it de rigueur to include a few wasted lives, whether they be those of security guards or innocent civilians.

And no doubt, when we define violence, we limit it to the purely physical. Who even cares about the ugly scars wrought on soul and spirit by daily emotional and verbal violence--from employers, neighbors, classmates, by parents on children and children on parents, by siblings just as well as strangers?

When and how did we learn to become so violent, both in action and in language? Whence came this thirst for inflicting pain, this joy in seeing others suffer, this need to watch someone bleed and hear him wail from wounds we have inflicted?

Psychologists and psychiatrists, social scientists and clinical theorists, priests and evangelists, academicians and politicians--every one is certain to have a ready answer or, at least, an acceptable theory. Perhaps years of repression against a moment of blinding liberation. Or the systematic and programmed destruction of a people's moral underpinnings by a dictator. The message of a totally materialistic culture delivered by all forms of media in graphic pictures and attractive colors. Changing times, changed people. A sign of the times?

The answers are probably all these, and more. But providing answers does not assure solutions, and sounding off does not produce results.

What is important is to awaken people to the power of action and to nag public officials about the responsibility of authority. The Crusade Against Violence had a good grip on the problem when they advocated action at all levels of government and society. Watchfulness and concerted action, beginning with community and homeowners' associations and barangays and reaching all the way to the President, will do more to prevent violence than all the law enforcers' guns put together.

But action alone will not be enough. Moral values will again have to be installed and internalized. Church and school organizations must reenergize and immediately start intensive programs in values formation and Christian living. Families must be at the forefront of a campaign to effect a turnaround in social and moral philosophy. If need be, parents must once again be willing martyrs at the altar of moral regeneration. Only then can they hope that their own children will be saved.

-- NBT

Growth, well-being, and greenery

"Crunch Time," The Evening Paper
Issue of 21 August 1996

With governments and businesses rushing like scared rats to keep up with the bandwagon of globalization and progress, even at the expense of local communities, there is need to take a breather, distance oneself from the Olympian effort, and chew on a few realities.

"Fast-growing" has become the accolade most economies now aspire for, but what is real growth?

Economists spout statistics when the question is asked, as if GNP and GDP, balance of trade and balance of payments, budget surpluses and import-export figures were all that mattered.

The United Nations, thank God, recognizes other standards. In its Human Development Report for 1996, the UN measured other indices such as life expectancy, education, and purchasing power among its member economies and, only last month, released its seventh annual report.

Its conclusions are disquieting. "The world has become more economically polarized, both between countries and within countries... If present trends continue, economic disparities between industrial and developing nations will move from inequitable to inhuman," reads the report's preface, written by UNDP Administrator James Gustave Speth.

Proceeding from each country's economic growth data, the UN went on to investigate exactly how many of the people are really better off than before. National wealth was not the sole input; well-being got priority ranking.

For many governments in the "fast-growing" East Asia and Asia-Pacific region, the report should be interesting reading. It mentioned 89 countries, most of them developing ones, where the people are worse off economically now than they were 10 years ago.

Were my parents alive today, they would be in full agreement. And I, having tasted a little of Philippine life, business, and development in the glorious '50s, can say I may have more money now than the people then, but they collectively lived better and longer. Of course, I don't expect the economists to agree with me.

However, they should take it from the UN Development Program: "A strategy for economic growth that emphasizes people and their productive potential is the only way to open opportunities... It is increasingly clear that new international measures are needed to encourage and support national strategies for employment creation and human development, especially in the poorer countries."

And where the two--employment creation and human development--come into direct conflict, then ways out of that conflict and toward livable and progressive settlement and accommodation would have to be found.

******

Ever heard of Biloxi, Gulfport, or Pascagoula in Mississippi? Or Dubuque in Iowa, Greeley in Colorado, Florence in South Carolina, and Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers in Arkansas?

Those who chafe at the moves of urban (mis)planners who see economic growth only in terms of megacities and metropolises that swallow up people and churn them into productive units servicing the needs of global industry, rather than the other way around, should have weapons at their disposal more potent than frustration.

Findings by the United States Department of Commerce can provide us a little ammunition. It is possible to create thriving growth centers out of smaller cities. The smaller centers mentioned above may not boast of actual export sales as large as Detroit's or New York's, but their percentage gains in exports were comparatively higher than those of the industrial and financial powerhouses.

In developing sustainable export strategies, it is not a community's size that matters. And truth to tell, the residents of Biloxi or Dubuque may be more relaxed, less stressful, and generally happier.

******

Say all you will against antiseptic Singapore, but when it comes to well-being, the hackneyed "clean and green" is still that city-state's main claim to fame in all areas of business and investment.

Take it from the brains behind clean-and-green Singapore himself, the abrasive Lee Kuan Yew. In a recent interview with The Straits Times, he said he conceived of well-kept trees and manicured gardens as bait to attract foreign investors to put money into what used to be nothing more than mosquito-infested swampland.

"To maintain a garden is a daily effort and if you can maintain it, it means you are capable of punctuality and systematic work," he said.

From the '60s onward, he ordered his whole island planted with trees, flowering plants, and grass. The grass had to be mown every other day, the plants had to be pruned daily, the trees had to be tended, the flowers had to be cut before they faded. Fines awaited homeowners who neglected their yards--front, back, side.

His words reminded me of the time a Japanese guest told us he always knew, on his periodic visits to Manila, which communities were moving on and which ones were being left behind. He only had to look, not at economic figures, but at the state of each town and city's greenery in public and private gardens, sidewalks, and street islands.

-- NBT

Close to collapse

"Crunch Time," The Evening Paper
Issue of 22 May 1996

It seems, and sadly so, that crunch time comes creeping up on us when we least want it. Section editors who also happen to be columnists know this only too well. Delinquency is an option preferable to mediocrity.

The other very real reason for my delinquency is a lack of success stories to relate. I was still plowing through the reams of copy that landed like confetti on newsdesks all over the world after the Habitat II conference in Turkey, only to get crowded out of vital space by political issues and election results.

Besides, no international conference is all substantive negotiation and productive discussion. Politics always manages to rear its ugly head into the most urgent of human conferences. Habitat II was no exception.

******

But as crunch times go, why the apocalyptic feeling that the human race and all human activity are sadly plunging into ultimate destruction? Could 2000 and a new millennium, if there will be one, have anything to do with it? Or is it a death wish of the most horrific proportions?

Listen. A very recent World Bank report on poverty, which came out only last Sunday, says that more than one-fifth of the world's population lives on less than $1 a day.

The report admits that the overall incidence of poverty is declining but adds that the number of people living on less than $1 a day increased from 1.23 billion in 1987 to 1.31 billion in 1993.

"About 90 percent of the world's poor in the developing world are located in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Indochina, Mongolia, Central America, Brazil, and the hinterland provinces of China," the report says.

Of these regions, two--South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa--get special focus in the World Bank report. And while we may manage, on a good day, to shrug our shoulders about Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia is not too far away.

"Today, South Asia is home to a quarter of the world's population, but it accounts for 39 percent of the world's poor," the bank says, even as it traces the high poverty rate in the region to high population growth and slow recovery from fiscal and balance-of-payments difficulties. That's neither here nor there for advocates of one cause or another and for critics of the WB-IMF twin monsters.

So, let's stick to the disquieting statistics. The percentage of the population living on less than $1 a day in South Asia declined slightly from 45.4 percent to 43.1 percent, but the overall number of poor people increased by 34.8 million between 1987 and 1993.

Out of every 12 children born, at least one is expected to die before reaching the age of one. One-third of the world's maternal deaths occur in South Asia.

For Sub-Saharan African nations, the task would appear almost insuperable: These nations must register growth rates of 6.5 percent merely to reduce poverty. The Philippines, from '80s experience, knows how difficult it is to even reach a positive 2.

Nor can we easily equate reduction of poverty with a 6-percent growth rate: No developed or developing country, says the World Bank report, entitled "Poverty Reduction and the World Bank--Progress and Challenges in the 1990s," has totally eradicated poverty.

While the bank has set goals for its lending programs that it hopes will boost the human capital of the poor and provide them with safety cushions, "more needs to be understood about the political and social economy of change and its effects on poverty reduction efforts."

That's a definite thumbs-down from the bank for its own efforts at reducing poverty in the world today.

******

Now, if we think the world is suddenly going to grow lush and bountiful simply because the human race is about to collapse from poverty and hunger, then we need to undergo a very serious rethink.

Another international document says at least 150 million of the world's people will be victims of drought and overexploitation of the once-green earth. The document, distributed at a four-day United Nations conference in Lisbon, bluntly states: "The population of the planet is expected to double in the next 50 years. The trend for the overexploitation of renewable resources could accelerate at a pace without precedent in the history of humanity."

The problem is that while the prospect of lush land turning to desert is enough to bring a global cabal of experts very near crunch time, other cabals of experts all over the world prefer to preach only in terms of high-priced, high-rise investments.

What about investing in the land, in farms and plantations, in once again nurturing the earth, the seas, the forests? It is not just being environmentally aware, it is also showing business acumen and historical foresight.

-- NBT

Self-sufficiency in food

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 15 January 1996

It says a lot about our priorities and values, the fact that the front pages of yesterday's morning dailies were dominated by huge photos of the returning half of a controversial, much-publicized, troubled coupling.

Buried in the inside pages and meriting no pictorial support whatsoever were snippets of news--reluctant coverage, one can almost feel--about government efforts to boost food production and avert a possible national food shortage in our immediate future.

In a struggle between food and tsismis, it is clear which one enjoys the distinct advantage, one unhappily supported, even fueled, by media. Is it already carved into the national soul and ingrained in our national mind--this preference for make-believe over reality, for showbiz over economics, for form over substance?

Maybe this explains why, even on the big screen, when we play out our fantasies, the cinematic creations that draw the crowds and bring in the money are not necessarily the ones that win the awards. But that, surely, is a subject worthy of another editorial.

For now, let us point out the intense activity going on in the area of agricultural development and food production. Late such intensity may be, after our countrymen had already spent a considerable part of last year lining up for imported rice or forking out more money than they should really be paying for every dining table's staple food.

It may be that people in government have finally realized that, other than merely being an occasion for changing the personalities at the helm of the country's food-supply chain, the repetition of a similar situation in the very near future may well lead to collapse of popular support.

The food-supply question is therefore being given the kind and amount of attention it has never gotten before. And about time, too. The Department of Budget and Management is releasing funds to finance increased irrigation and water impounding. Support projects like multi-drying and farm-to-market infrastructure will be receiving separate allocations. Food-producing regions hit hard by last year's series of killer typhoons will be rehabilitated. Thankfully, both government and private agencies dedicated to research and development in agriculture and agribusiness are also ready to contribute their efforts toward securing adequate food supply for the country.

We hope these efforts--which, by the way, still fall short of a comprehensive handle on the whole issue--at least point to one direction: that government is finally weaning itself, however slowly, from the idea of importation as the inevitable cure-all to our food problems. Those who have been following the global food picture know that in the next millennium, food will not only be in short supply on a worldwide basis, it will also be expensive.

Only food self-sufficiency will help us escape the specter of hunger and disorder in the future.

-- NBT

Women's work

As opinion editor of The Evening Paper from 1995-96, I also wrote a twice-weekly nameless column. Nameless because, in the late Nonoy Marcelo's creative template for the editorial pages (his special favor for me, a townmate, high-schoolmate, and family friend), the editorial columns were not going to carry column titles, only the names of those who write them and the titles of their postings.

As I had just moved then from editing a 3-edition, 120+-page global trade magazine, most of my columns dealt with economic development. But I had an expansive view of development, embracing both hard and soft issues.

Personally, I never equated development with gender. To me, the disadvantaged need the benefits of enlightened development, whether they be men or women. The feminist movement, at peak strength when I went in 1971 to the United States as an exchange visitor of the Department of State and the American Women in Radio & Television, attempted to enlist my appearance at some of their campaign events. I was, however, more interested then--aside from my work in the field that qualified me to be there--in the US civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the future of political dissent, the last perhaps understandably, as many times I was asked by Fil-Ams how I could still want to come back to the Philippines, given the regime prevalent in the country at the time.

However, it was also to recognize a valid economic companion issue that I wrote this gender piece more than two decades later.

____________________

Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper
Issue of 17 August 1995

On Tuesday, I mentioned how this week had me so focused on significant international news about women that, much as I always swore by my personal stand that development and trade were issues best freed from the clutches of gender hysteria, I felt I had to touch on the new World Bank micro-lending package for the poorest of the poor, and the connected experiences of five empowered women--four from Jordan, one from India.

Today, let me deal with two major reports that will soon enough fill up newspaper space and broadcast airtime, especially as the world warms up for next month's Fourth World Conference on Women, to be held in China.

The first, the Human Development Report commissioned by the United Nations Development Program, went through a particularly caustic exercise: it placed a price on the largely "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued" work performed by women, both at home and in the community, in 31 countries of the world. The 31 countries were picked to provide a credible cross-section of the world's industrial, developing, and transition economies.

Its conclusion should put women through an emotional wringer. The study revealed the price of women's "unpaid" work during one year in 31 countries: $11 trillion!

To appreciate this figure, place it against the background of other statistics. The annual global economic output has been estimated at roughly $23 trillion. The combined GNPs of the world's three largest economies--the United States ($6.3 trillion), Japan ($3.7 trillion), and Germany ($1.8 trillion)--total $11.8 trillion.

In fact, according to the UNDP report, women work longer hours than men in nearly every country in the world. Most of that work, unfortunately, is unpaid--household, food production (especially in rural Africa), nursing and caregiving.

If we can only translate one-half of women's efforts and energies devoted--sometimes from force of pitiful circumstances--to such "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued" work to actual paid, recognized, valued, and economically productive labor, and then get the world's men to do the other unpaid half, imagine how much wealthier all families will be!

According to the report, South Korean men spend about 44 percent of their time on unpaid work. And look how vibrant the South Korean economy is today!

Simplistic? Well, then, turn to another landmark report, one prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based agricultural research group. "Women: The Key to Food Security," which strikes at a very topical concern, especially for the Philippines, concludes that gender equity in the countryside will be critical in meeting the food needs of the rapidly growing populations of developing countries.

The report strongly advocates reforms in these countries on a variety of fronts--education, training, land ownership. "If women were given the same resources as men, developing countries would see significant increases in agricultural productivity," Agnes Quisumbing, IFPRI fellow and lead author of the report, said.

Working on a flood of data from 15 developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the report detailed agricultural areas where women farmers have always had less compared to the men: agricultural extension programs, machinery that is often also inappropriate for women's needs, research data, access to agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and technologies, and qualifications for obtaining credit.

Yet, women's strengths in the countryside--their indigenous knowledge about seeds and growing systems, their openness to environmentally sustainable agricultural practices, their hope and often irrepressible enthusiasm, their eternal willingness to learn (these last two are my own additions)--are undeniable.

Sometimes, all it needs is a force to bond women together toward maximum accomplishment, whether in the countryside or the urban community. Blunting the edges of "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued" women's anger was precisely the triumph of the women whose stories, as recounted in my Tuesday column, began with a micro-lending truth: that women are often better at paying their loans than men!

-- NBT

Whatever happened to ex-China emerging areas?

2011: Notice that as early as 1995, Europe's northernmost powers were already eyeing the world's arctic jewels with much lust.

____________________

Last week, APEC heads of state met for three days in Vietnam, an annual summit more honored for ceremonial significance than for real accomplishments. As business editor of The Evening Paper in 1996, when the APEC summit was held in Subic, I experienced firsthand the modus vivendi resorted to by participating governments and saw up close the compromises struck long before the summits are held.

I doubt that the accommodations have stopped, and I do not believe the tradeoffs ever get called in. Every year, the big problems remain and only the small items get discussed, checked, or shelved.

If we revisit an APEC scenario in 1995, as mapped out in my column below, we will realize that only one emerging growth area has really taken off with amazing speed--the Middle East. And even then, that takeoff is limited to specific countries. There's another tradeoff, I suspect.

____________________

Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper
Issue of 14 November 1995

Even as the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum meets in Osaka this month to push its free-trade agenda, other regions and subregions in various parts of the world are looking into their development needs and actively pursuing them with the urgency of those who feel there may no longer be a tomorrow for their people.

In the Philippines alone, two growth regions well outside the metro areas have surfaced. A southern triangle covering Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, called the East Asean Growth Area (EAGA), has the advantage over a still loosely conceptualized northern subregion. At meetings among government and private-sector representatives, EAGA is steadily being pushed through joint-venture agreements among local businessmen. Since the formal organization of the regional group 18 months ago, agreements have reached an impressive total of 53.

Asean countries, however, do not have a monopoly on subregional initiatives. The newest, and perhaps most attractive to international investors, may be the proposed six-country Mekong River development plan. Covering one of the most fertile areas in Asia and running from China's Yunnan province to the south of Vietnam, the Mekong River plan involves opening the virgin area to global trading, with realistic exchange rates, low inflation, and budgetary discipline. The objective is, of course, to bring in the foreign capital the subregion needs.

Joining forces in the project are the governments of Thailand, China, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam. Representatives of Burma, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia zeroed in on their transport, telecommunications, and power needs in the Mekong area, seeking investments from both private and public sectors in Asia for their development. Burma's Economic Planning Minister David Abel defined the subregion's most urgent need at present as one of developing the "existing infrastructure facilities" of the six countries.

At an Asian Development Bank-sponsored conference of subregional representatives and potential investors held in Manila, ADB officials admitted that many of the projects may not seem financially attractive, despite potentially high economic rates of return, since most of the countries involved in the subregional grouping are only now starting to open up their economies. Environmental policies of the six governments involved will need to be improved, according to ADB Vice Chairman Bong Suh Lee. The Bank, though, has committed itself to developing and taking part in a range of financing mechanisms that could help channel funds to the Mekong development project.

******

Compared to the Mekong River Area, the Middle East and North Africa hardly appear undeveloped. Yet, seven countries stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf are proposing vast economic projects, requiring at least $40 billion, to redirect the region from war to development. Some of these countries, oddly enough, are also considered some of the region's richest occupants.

Leading the Middle East bandwagon is Israel, which presented a $25-billion package at a three-day summit early this month. The summit is actually already a follow-up to a more political gathering held last year in Casablanca, where Arabs and Israelis mingled for the first time before the political crisis caused by the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The Palestinians have proposed $6 billion worth of projects that include a steel rod factory and a $1.5-billion system that will bring water from the West Bank to replace the increasingly saline water supply of the Gaza Strip.

Other projects in the priority list of the seven countries--Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, and Qatar--include grand development schemes such as a canal to carry Red Sea water to replenish the Dead Sea, natural gas from Qatar for Israel, and a Palestinian plan to turn the violence-plagued Gaza into the Riviera of the eastern Mediterranean.

However, the governments that did not send representatives to the summit in Amman, Jordan, were as notable as those who did. Syria and Lebanon boycotted because of the lack of progress in their negotiations with Israel. Hardliners Libya, Iraq, and Iran were not present for obvious reasons.

Perhaps the most optimistic comments during the summit came from the United States delegation. "This is a step-by-step process. It is not to happen overnight. (But) it is something that could not have happened a few short years ago," said US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.

In fact, the ghost of the region's political reality was perhaps the summit's most pervasive presence. With Israel still to sign peace agreements with all its Arab foes, sales pitches may be plentiful and the region may be attractive, but investors are definitely wary.

One US banker openly commented that he heard nothing during the summit that would differentiate the Middle East from Southeast Asia as a market. IMF statistics show that among the world's emerging markets, the Middle East attracts only one-third of one percent of world foreign investment.

The reasons given by the 1,000 or so businessmen and future investors who attended the summit comprise an emerging market's virtual instruction manual: provide adequate economic data and information on companies; break down the resistance among local businessmen to change and Western market standards; build a strong, independent stock-exchange regulatory body to protect the interests of investors; privatize state enterprises and open up family-owned businesses; and cure Arab-Arab rivalry, especially over the issue of a Middle East development bank, that transcends Arab-Israeli enmity.

The summit's final communiqué struck a cautious note: "The summit recognized that the circle of peace needs to be widened."

This can only mean that the Middle East as a development and investment region still has a long way to travel before fruition.

******

But then, come to think of it, an even longer route awaits what may now only be a gleam in the eye of Russian and Nordic leaders: arctic development.

Last month, foreign ministers from the two regions met to discuss the common effort to clean up the environment and develop the Barents Sea area in the European Arctic. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev promised his country would speed up the removal of nuclear wastes on the Kola peninsula bordering Norway in the Arctic and simultaneously start work to improve regional infrastructure.

When Russia was still part of the Soviet Union, its nuclear waste was stored on the Kola peninsula, home to the former communist superpower's submarine-based nuclear-missile arsenals. Only after the nuclear waste is cleaned up can the Barents region even dream of attracting massive development capital for the ambitious projects it has on its drawing boards: harbor improvement, ship building, energy, banking, and telecommunications.

-- NBT