President Aquino’s Cabinet Appointments: The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same

As the Aquino Administration matures, current developments seem to be confirming my predictions that there will hardly be any change in the administration’s political direction.

This from the Philippine Inquirer, (bold emphasis mine)

“President Benigno Aquino lll’s decision to pick executives from big business for key Cabinet posts has placed his administration in potential conflict-of-interest situations, particularly in state-regulated enterprises, such as power, water, telecommunications and toll roads, lawmakers noted Tuesday.

They said the big business appointments were a growing public concern because they were identified with four of the most influential business conglomerates in the country – the Ayala, Lopez, Aboitiz and Metro Pacific groups – to positions with powers to make or unmake business empires.”

Some thoughts

1. It’s payback time. Election campaign bills come due.

2. Conflicts of interests depend on the definition. Every person sitting on a regulatory agency or bureaucracy has an interest which will always come in conflict of the interest of the regulated. (Yes, I mean personal interest. Political leaders and bureaucrats are not gods nor are they supposed to embody our perception of interest)

In the above, what is clearly being defined as conflict of interests is regulatory capture or as defined by Wikipedia.org as “when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead acts in favor of the commercial or special interests that dominate in the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure, as it can act as an encouragement for large firms to produce negative externalities. The agencies are called Captured Agencies.”

In other words, regulatory agencies function to advance the interest of select or favoured groups at the expense of the rest of society.

By the use of the regulatory body as legal barrier, competition is therefore restrained, and thus, economic opportunities are allotted based on political concessions via the arbitrary application of regulations or what is known as economic rent.

3. Insider versus outsider game. Insiders are those who comprise the economic-political elite class. Outsiders are those in the periphery who are made to believe that genuine change is in the offing. And outsiders are the majority and wielded by the insiders for election purposes.

The Aquino appointments clearly demonstrate this deeply rooted Insider based relationship in the context of the Philippine political economy.

Hence, the only thing that has changed are the personalities involved in manning the bureaucracy, and not the anti market political patronage system. The net effect is a status quo.

And as we previously predicted, ``The rule of the entrenched political class means 'the more things change the more they remain the same'.”

We also anticipated the kingmaker role of the personalities involved in the Meralco takeover in the recently concluded elections, which apparently has emerged in the appointments.

Elections are, therefore, a vehicle which grants a mantle of legitimacy to the immoral alliances of vested interest group and the political class.

As H.L. Mencken rightly labeled, “[Democracy] has become simply a battle of charlatans for the votes of idiots."