IN announcing his intention to run next year for the presidency, Sen. Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, the only son of the Philippines’ first democratically elected head of state, Corazon Aquino, said something really rather odd. He vowed that if he wins next May, he would be the sort of president who will be missed when he steps down.
Some would say that it is a bit premature for the newly declared candidate to be dwelling on his legacy. However, if by making this statement, Noynoy Aquino is saying that he plans, if he wins office, to make his incumbency a time of groundbreaking change, then perhaps he can be forgiven. He also announced he intends to carry on the work begun by his mother, when she reluctantly assumed the presidential mantle that ought to have been worn by her assassinated husband, Benigno.
That is all well and good. But Aquino needs to recognize that the task his mother undertook did not in the end get very far. Perhaps it was weakness and indecision that caused her not to press on with the land and social reforms that millions of Filipinos hoped she would spearhead. Perhaps it was that fact that she herself was a member of the privileged rich landed elite that made her falter when, in the early days of her presidency, she could have acted decisively.
In marrying Aquino, Corazon linked her own powerful Cojuangco clan of Tarlac with the Aquinos. Noynoy Aquino’s Liberal Party will be pitched against the National People’s Coalition, the political stronghold of the Cojuangcos that has still not finally settled on its candidate. Other likely contenders will be Bongbong Marcos, the son of the late dictator and the discredited and debauched former president, Joseph Estrada who still leads his Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) party.
All contenders will pitch for the popular vote by solemnly promising change. But every one of them should remember that Filipinos have heard this all before and their patience is growing thin. In taking up his mother’s inheritance, Noynoy Aquino ought to be particularly sensitive to the hopes he will once again raise in the hearts of his supporters. If he wins and is serious about breaking the economic and political power of the oligarchy of which he himself is a part, his will be a difficult and troubled presidency.
Perhaps, therefore, the most important element in his campaign, the constituency that he should be addressing most assiduously is not the poor nor the frustrated middle classes, but the powerful elite. His message has to be that to continue the social and economic imbalances will condemn the Philippines to poor growth and lost opportunities in a wider Asian economy that is becoming the world’s powerhouse. The oligarchs will lose out every bit as much as the masses of the disadvantaged. However, letting go their grip on power and land will give them new opportunities to prosper in a vibrant economy in which everyone can have a fair share. This may, therefore, be the last chance for the country’s elite.
Human space travel
EXCERPTS from an editorial in Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday:
Nothing pushes frontiers in science and technology — and the human imagination — like space travel to other bodies in space. Breaking the bounds of Earth is now the pursuit of more than a dozen nations, all eager for the economic spin-offs such a pursuit brings.
Yet the pioneer in space, the United States, faces a shortage of money from Congress and may be forced to surrender its global leadership. That’s the take-away from a report issued Tuesday by a 10-member panel set up by President Barack Obama to evaluate human space exploration.
Without an additional $3 billion a year, more international cooperation, and private industry sending rockets into low orbit, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has no pathway that “permits human exploration to continue in any meaningful way,” according to the panel’s summary report.
The panel, consisting of aerospace experts, suggests a range of options for long-distance travel in space, such as skipping the planned Moon station for landings on asteroids instead. But the report’s two messages are that Congress should not set goals it doesn’t fund and that NASA’s focus should be on projects beyond low-orbit where the rewards and risks are greatest for such a public enterprise.
NASA’s top workers also came under the panel’s scrutiny. Many of the agency’s engineers and scientists need to reorient themselves back to developing new technologies needed for decades of deep-space exploration.
Indeed, it is likely that a political lobby has developed to keep space jobs focused on existing programs and low-orbit missions. (The lobby is based in the space-oriented and politically powerful states of Florida, Texas, and California.) This report lays out bigger thinking, asking for manned projects that will “re-engage the minds at American universities, in industry, and within NASA.”
Congress has backed President George W. Bush’s 2004 goal of creating a station on the Moon as a training and resource base to put humans on Mars. But it has underfunded the project, leaving the budget of the NASA at $18 billion a year. If that underfunding persists, the panel suggests a “flexible path” of landing first on asteroids or on Mars’ moons.
A lack of money might also compel the US to subsidize private space launches for low-orbit missions — the way federal government stimulated postal delivery by air in the 1920s, the report suggests. That industry is poised to take on such a role in a few years. Like the solar or wind industry, private space travel may need a kick-start.
