Aquino’s Legacy: Exclusive Growth, Ineffectual Bureaucracy

An Assessment of the Aquino III government (2010-2016)

James Matthew Miraflor

Vice President, Freedom from Debt Coalition

The verdict is in.

If there is one catch-phrase that can summarize the legacy of President Benigno Simeon Aquino III in his half-a-decade rule, it is this: “exclusive growth via an ineffectual bureaucracy”. A growth dictated by the moods of global market amid worsening poverty and stagnating inequality levels, and the failure of the bureaucracy to even spend the money it was able to collect to arrest poverty – these cap the legacy of who was once touted as a savior of Philippine democracy and commonweal from the dark years of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Did Aquino III measure up?

We argue that this is not just an accident of history that Aquino III failed to fulfill his mantra of “kung walang korap, walang mahirap”. Granting that we have made strides in the fight against corruption – a statement that is made with some reservation given the proliferation of patrimonialism in Congress and the national government agencies – it would have been simply illogical to assume that those strides alone will translate to better welfare for the rest of the Filipino people. Rather, we insist that the failures of Aquino III are deeply rooted to its philosophy of government – the vision it constructed when it translated its “social contract” into the 2010-2016 Philippine Development Plan (PDP).

Progressive groups such as the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) already criticized the 2010-2016 PDP from its inception, saying that it is weak on asset reform and fails to construct the economic underpinnings of a true “straight path” and “inclusive growth”. NEDA, under the neoliberal Director-General Cayetano Paderanga, basically ripped-off the agenda of Arangkada Philippines, a document prepared by the Joint Foreign Chambers of the Philippines (see letter from JFC to Paderanga here). This meant that the resulting PDP basically champions the interest of big capital over the interest of the Filipino masses. That the Aquino administration would end its term with increasing number of poor citizens in a growing economy demonstrates the bias it has set for itself when it began.