Part of the problem

Alejandro Lichauco’s inspiration for this article is Nasser’s military coup in Egypt, its nationalization of Suez Canal and the socialization of agriculture, which brought a lot of prosperity for poor Egyptians in the 50’s. Thailand recently was also a military ruled government but they’re not doing too bad. So Luis, there has been an example of a military taking over a government and doing general good. But you’re right though. I think if Philippine Military should take over they would be corrupt. There are a lot of anecdotal evidence in the press of army top brass all over the country being corrupt. It would take a very skillful and machiavellian group of top soldiers to control these corrupt government and military officials and bring economic reforms to this feudal country.

The root of a lot of these problems is control of vast lands are in the hands of the few. We need to socialize AGAIN the ownership of agricultural lands. There’s historical precedent to agricultural lands being the property of the community in pre-hispanic times. When the Tagalogs, Kapampangans, Ilocanos, Visayan ethnic groups, etc. came to the Philippines from Indonesia in balangays more than 500 years ago we brought this notion of lands being the property of the community, of the barangay. With coming of the Spaniards, they set up encomiendas (feudal holdings owned by Filipino tribal leaders and Spaniards-land became private property), religous orders also set up their own vast land estates. These lands were transfered to a few hacienderos during the American colonial government and it carries on to this day. So yeah we need to bring back this notion of socialized farming to spread the wealth to the majority of our population which are poor farmers.

The only group that is doing this at the moment is the CPP. But wait! These are communists, and communism is dead and has been historically proven to be ineffective in terms of creating efficient industries. But socialism of land is proven to be a good thing wherever it is implemented.

So this is the dilemna. We need a government which is PRO-SOCIALIZATION OF AGRICULTURAL LANDS but at the same time is PRO-CAPITALIST, which as yet DOESN’T EXIST and neither does stand to traditional left or right classification of parties in the political spectrum. Whoever creates this party, which is PRO-BUSINESS (ie adheres to laissez faire capitalism) but at the same time is for the COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULUTURAL LANDS I will join at the drop of a hat. I would have formed this political party myself, maybe when I am ready. Anyway e-mail me on what you think of this.