Philippines Outlook according to Edward
From Edward’s Compatibility Club, Philippines Outlook 2010:
I think that this excerpt from a memo (below) issued by the CIA about the 1965 presidential elections in the Philippines aptly describes the coming electoral possibilities:
A Pyrrhic Victory?
Regardless of a Macapagal or Marcos win, the Philippines as such, and specifically the Filipinos, stand to gain very little indeed. Interesting as the current elections may be, the principal fact which they point up is a continued deterioration in the Philippines situation. The elections serve to aggravate and perhaps make more readable that situation; there is little chance the results will improve it. – Memorandum prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, October 27, 1965.The CIA described the election campaign, the candidates, and the issues and concluded that as all three Presidential candidates were “Western oriented and pledge to continue close ties with the US and the West.” – Intelligence Memorandum OCI No. 2343/65, October 28, 1965.
The Memo also added that therefore, given their orientation, it doesn’t matter who wins, what’s important is that the winning candidate has a “socio-economic reform program” to temper down generalized public discontent.
“Socio-economic reform program” therefore means ‘Free World’ oriented reforms (i.e. education, streamlining bureacracy, modernisation programs, globalisation adjustments, etc, and such reforms should never include giving back land to the peasant farmers or giving greater economic power to local traders versus foreign ones).
I will stay in the Philippines, Mandy. The reason why things won’t get better, is because a lot of people in the Philippines is “Western oriented and pledge to continue close ties with the US and the West” and want to abandon the Philippines and go abroad. I don’t want to do that. I will stay here and make things different, and make things better.