Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference
[Delivered at the Manila Hotel, July 22, 1992]
A new social contract
THANK YOU very much for inviting me to this Conference, which many recognize as one of the most influential. Influential not only because of the spiritual and economic leadership which this group wields but, more important, because it is in the best position to help improve the quality of life of our poorer brethren.
Today we all acknowledge that there is a material and public component to our human dignity.
The practical uses of equality
In our time, the public sphere of our common life has many concerns. And we agree that the most urgent of these is the issue of social justice—of the more equitable sharing of prosperity.
There are many reasons that compel us to attempt this—self-interest included—because the few who are rich can never be secure in their possessions, living in the midst of so many who are poor. Then, also, Christian charity admonishes us not to harden our hearts, nor shut our hands, for as long as there is among us a poor man. . . .
But beyond Christian charity there is a very practical reason we should do all we can to redress the imbalance between rich and poor in national society. And this is that a measure of social equality is good both for political openness and for economic development that sustains itself.
This truth is self-evident in the experience of other Third World countries.
Gross
inequality unavoidably leads to still-greater inequality, no matter how much growth society as a whole achieves.
By contrast, in countries where some social leveling — typically through agrarian reform—preceded periods of economic growth, then development not only wiped out mass poverty but also generated popular pressures for democracy.
What this simple fact of life tells us is that we need to establish in national society a measure of equality which can make economic growth meaningful to the lives of the masses of our people.
The public use of wealth
This is why I’m highly pleased that the BBC has taken up Pope John Paul IPs suggestion that those responsible for our country’s public life, those who control its economy, those engaged in education and science and other influential forces in society bind themselves in a social contract to work to benefit ever greater numbers of their fellow-citizens.
The goals—visions—that your social contract seeks, my Government shares.
I welcome your willingness as the private owners of wealth to make public use of it; as I welcome the role of religious faith in forming the civic conscience and imparting a moral dimension to citizenship.
At my Inaugural, I declared my resolve to obtain for the poorest of our poor the humanities of life.
I urged our countrymen to regard poverty in the Philippines as a kind of tyranny which oppresses so many of our people—a tyranny against which we must declare the moral equivalent of war.
Until now we have relied on “trickle-down” mechanisms—from large Government projects and national businesses—to ease mass poverty. But development has not trickled down, because there are few channels through which growth can flow downward.
Little financing is available for the poor. And their production systems are limited by their technology, their skills and their lack of access to markets.
A direct attack on poverty
The only way to wipe out Philippine poverty is to make a direct attack on it. All the agencies of Government must take on a
pro
-poor bias. They must begin to stress the well-being of the majority among us who are without the means to lead decent and useful lives.
I mean to initiate programs and projects that address directly the concerns of specific groups of the poor—marginal farmers, coastal fishermen, upland cultivators, disempowered women, out-of-school youths and urban squatters.
My Government shall intervene not just to generate job opportunities and skills training. To enhance each Filipino family’s capability to provide for the basic necessities: to be nourished, to be sheltered, to be productive.
It is because of this that I have shown grave concern over rising prices of prime commodities and the lack of job opportunities for those eager to work. We shall go far in feeding undernourished schoolchildren in the poorest communities; and we shall help poor people organize to protect their human and political rights for their own sake.
As an earnest of my Government’s seriousness, I intend to create a Presidential body ultimately responsible for poverty eradication. This proposed body will oversee the antipoverty programs of the concerned departments, commissions and other agencies and coordinate their efforts with the rest of the bureaucracy.
As soon as Congress opens, I shall be sending it a message in this regard.
Immediately, we shall be realigning the proposed 1993 Budget in a deliberate effort to bring up our poorest regions, provinces and towns to the level of the more developed ones.
To a great degree, the poorest Philippine regions are poor because they have had less access to basic Government services than the other regions.
We shall be allocating to these poor regions and provinces more than their usual share of electric power, elementary schools, health clinics, farm-to-market roads, irrigation systems and other basic infrastructure.
A bias for the poorest regions
We shall also see to it that they have increasing access to land, credit and technology.
We shall be encouraging towns and barangays to establish Community Action Programs which Government and the private sector can support with Rinds and expertise.
Government shall be setting measurable standards for gauging its success in easing poverty year after year—in terms of increased literacy, lower infant mortality, rising per-capita incomes and so forth.
All these plans can be realized — and realized speedily — if the more influential sectors of our society heed our call for unity. They are in the best position to set the example for the great majority of our people.
I urge them now to speak well of each other instead of finding fault. Let us rally together in support of the national leadership instead of magnifying alleged quarrels and bickerings. Let us forge a stronger feeling of nationhood ahead of pursuing partisan politics and narrower interests.
Part of our task must be to compel the comfortable to fulfill their civic responsibilities.
In this work, both business and organized labor must help. Countervailing pressure must be raised against the interest-groups determined to keep things as they are. Popular opinion must generate a national consensus for reform and change.
In building this consensus for reform, the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference can be a tremendous force—because it adds the quality of compassion to the dynamism of individual enterprise.
The rock of responsibility
In the final analysis, human societies seek economic growth not just because it enables human beings to accumulate material goods. Economic growth is important because it allows greater human freedom.
Economic growth will mean nothing unless it leads us to a humane society. We cannot accept private enterprise that is based on exploitation and inequality. We cannot accept development that tolerates the persistence of poverty in national society.
As John Paul II reminds us, what counts in the end is the transcendent dignity of the person: what we must seek to build is a national community founded on the rock of mutual responsibility.
Source
:
Presidential Museum and Library
Ramos, F. V. (1993).
To win the future : people empowerment for national
development.
[Manila] : Friends of Steady Eddie.