The responses of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) as a regional grouping to Covid-19 have been divisive, unclear, nonconsultative, impromptu, and driven by divergent policies, leading its member-states to control the pandemic individually and independently of each other. These are the assessments of observers among think tanks, media outfits, and independent researchers. A...
Author: Eduardo C. Tadem (Eduardo C. Tadem)
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After 48 years, Philippine agrarian reform remains an illusory goal
On June 10 this year, the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) reached its 34th year of implementation. If we were to include the dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ “Tenant Emancipation Act” of September 1972, agrarian reform as a major government program in the Philippines has been around for 48 long years. The Marcos version was an...
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What is wrong with technocrats?
President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s designation of known technocrats to manage the Philippine economy raises the issue of whether continuing to rely on this particular group of experts can actually do good for the Filipino people and the country. The rise of technocratic management of the world’s economies over the last 70 years has spawned studies...
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Retelling the natural hazards, dangers of the Bataan nuclear power plant
Nuclear energy first came to the Philippines in 1958 when the United States gifted the Philippines with a nuclear fission reactor. The government then established the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission (Paec) on the University of the Philippines’ Diliman campus. The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), on the other hand, was approved by the Marcos regime...
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Why rural poverty persists in the Philippines
Philippine rural development has basically been the handiwork of colonialism and world capitalism. But the dominant role of external forces in development is not simply a colonial extension. Internal structures having already been laid in place by colonialism, they were able to continuously reproduce themselves in harmony with the external demands of the global capitalist...