commentary Hope for nat’l transformation
Hope for nat’l transformation
Saturday, 04 February 2012 00:00
NOT everything in life is measured by money, and not all capital is financial. Take social capital for instance. In so many ways, it could be more valuable than financial capital. And think about political capital too. The latter could even be greater than both financial capital and social capital combined. I remember the old debate in the academic circles about the real prima donna of the social sciences. Is it economics or political science? I started with a bias for political science because that was my major, but as I entered the business world, I also saw the importance of economics. It seems that I have turned full circle now, because I now think that political capital is the most important of all, but nonetheless I also think that it should be blended with financial capital and social capital.
We may be a poor country, but we are very rich in natural capital and social capital. The problem is, we are tapping our natural capital in the wrong way, even to the extent of destroying it, and we are not tapping our social capital in the right way. You may have heard the question of many Filipinos before, asking why there are so many poor and hungry people in a country that is so rich in natural resources and even richer in personal talent. The answer to that question is always the same, and that is the lack of political will. The key to political will of course is political capital and it is good to note that President Noynoy Aquino has clearly plenty of that. President Aquino won on the campaign promise of social change, and that is clearly the direction that he is heading for now. Roughly translated, social change also means national transformation and that is what we all want. Perhaps for the first time in recent political histor y, we have a President who has not only the political will to drive national transformation, he also has the politcal capital that is needed to make it happen. Capital is valuable in any form, and even if political capital is all that we have in abundance now, we should now grab the chance to achieve national transformation in the best forms that it could come.
Political capital could translate into financial capital, and that is now going to happen through the Public and Private Partnership (PPP) programs of Aquino. One example is the National Greening Program (NGP) that could deliver three in one combinations of environment, housing and livelihood projects. Aside from planting trees for reforestation and for profit, it has the potential of building new communities with built-in housing and livelihood components. It could also become an excellent corporate social responsibility (CSR) program for private companies. The Corinthian Cof fee Clutch (C3) will now also function as the CSR Coordinating Council. Still to be known as C3, it now aims to be the focal point for coordinating the CSR and the PPP initiatives of the private sector in support of nation building and national transformation. C3 is not going to initiate its own projects. Instead, it is going to support the projects of proponents who will take advantage of its coordinative function. In particular, C3 will support the NGP by playing a key role in the building of new communities.
For a start, C3 has already identified project sites in Zambales, Capiz and Agusan del Norte where the pilot sites of the new communities will be built. Unlike the other housing programs, C3 will focus first on the personal transformation of the prospective beneficiaries, by way of their own moral recovery. C3 will also give importance to environmental transformation, in the hope of transforming not just the people, but also the Land where the people will live. On the practical side, C3 will make sure that the sites will have sustainable energy and good connectivity. This is the essence of the green and blue advocacy. Green for ecology, blue for energy.
In so many ways, ecology and energy actually complement each other. We can grow inputs for sustainable energy. And if we have energy, we can process the harvest of our farms. And if our energy is clean, it will not destroy the environment. Hopefully, we could grow enough trees in our forests to prevent floods. All these could be done through a good mix of tapping political capital, social capital and financial capital. All these are possible with strong political will, under a strong political leader.
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by Ike Señeres
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