Philippine 100 Peso Commemorative Bills and the Philippine Political Economy

Yesterday I was surprised to see the freshly printed moneys I received as change from a popular fast chain came with an embossed stamp from an elite law school.

I looked up the web and discovered that such stamp had supposedly been meant as commemorative to the 75^th Diamond Jubilee anniversary as shown below.

Ateneo alumni President Aquino was a guest speaker and received the plaque of special issue from the Philippine central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) honcho Mr. Amando Tetangco at a recent ceremony

And this has not just been for Ateneo but also for state school University of the Philippines (100 peso bill pictures of Ateneo and UP from rightonthemark)

People don’t seem to see anything wrong with this but I do. I see these actions as symptoms of a deeply seated social disorder which continues to plague the Philippine society.

My point of inquiries:

1. Why Ateneo and University of the Philippines (UP) and NOT other competing law schools such as San Beda, UST, FEU, UE, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Manila, University of San Carlos, Arellano, Lyceum or St. Louis University? What's so special with UP and Ateneo?

2. Why law schools instead of engineering, computer science, sciences, liberal arts, culinary or other schools with different specialization? What's so special with law schools?

3. Why schools and not some other private sector interests (charity, socio-civic groups etc)? Why the predilection for schools?

4. Yet are these commemoratives signs of independence from political and private sector influences?

The privilege of central bank’s monopoly in the issuance of money clearly reveals of its political bias in favor of the political and economic elite and their interests.

Commemoratives are thus emblematic of the incumbent policy structure and the prospective direction of political policies.

Moreover, the impression that central banks are independent of political influences is entirely a myth.

Even more, the preference for ‘elitist’ law schools signify as symptoms of the crony capitalist framework of the Philippine political economy. As pointed out before, elite schools (including my alma mater—saying this cost me many facebook ‘school’ friends) serve as breeding, training and recruitment grounds for the political class and their politically privileged economic clients.

A subordinate polemic is that the Peso bills are used as implicit advertisement space which again depends on political connections and the attendant political interests of the political stewards.

Finally, the pathetic commemoratives on the 100 Peso bill only exposes the true essence of legal tender based paper funny money—the existence of which (New Central Bank Act) ironically have been based on unilateral regulations drafted by lawyers and legitimated by legislators.