EVANGELIST Apollo Quiboloy, who heads the second largest non-Catholic Christian church in the country, has called for the ouster of “President Marcos and First Lady Lisa Marcos.” He claimed Marcos’ administration is an “evil and unrighteous organization and is cooperating with the US government’s plot to kill him.”

Malacañang has ignored the accusations; most media has dismissed these as baseless rants.

Quiboloy, who is addressed as “Pastor,” may merely be frantic over the likelihood that this administration will very actively aid the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has filed grievous charges against him, listing him among the FBI’s fugitives.

OUR political leaders are so insanely wrong in claiming that restrictions on foreign investments enshrined in the 1987 Constitution have resulted in our economic quagmire, and therefore this should be amended. The reality is that it is the “EDSA People Power Revolution’s” ramifications that have created obstacles to economic growth so serious that we have fallen behind most of our neighbors in Asia.

EDSA had three major consequences that were deleterious to economic growth in the past four decades. First, it toppled a dictatorship but reinstated elite rule focused on their wealth accumulation and indifferent to the nation’s growth. Second, EDSA’s “democratic space” — as the Communist Party of the Philippines put it — allowed insurgencies to grow, which discouraged local and foreign investments. Third, it demonized the kind of state-directed economic policy responsible for the growth of the “Dragon and Tiger” economies of Asia.

First, while toppling a dictatorship, EDSA swiftly restored the Philippines’ anarchy of elite families, which was the situation since the nation’s birth. This remains the reality concealed through the scheme of popular voting, which has the added advantage though of preventing inter-elite conflicts from turning violent, which would be disastrous for everyone.

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BY RSA, I mean, of course, San Miguel Corp. President and CEO Ramon S. Ang, who is usually referred to by his initials. By “maybe we have a chance,” I mean a chance for this country to finally crawl out of its essentially stagnant, stop-and-go economy since 1987 if, say, we have just a dozen conglomerates like that led by RSA. One of the richest countries in Southeast Asia, our economy’s pitiful path has resulted in our falling (in terms of GDP per capita) behind China in 1997, Thailand in 1985, Indonesia in 2001, and most recently, Vietnam in 2020.

You see, rarely discussed as a factor in a country’s development has been the behavior and quality of its big businesses, even if it is mainly these entities, especially large corporations, whether private or state, and not government, which actually undertake most of the economic activity that determines the course of our economy.

This phenomenon has been little studied — except in the past few years* — because of the dominance of the neoclassical economic ideology, which decrees that corporations’ raison d’etrè and overarching goal is to maximize profits for its shareholders, period. The invisible hand of the free market will then automatically allocate resources for an economy’s growth. The economic growth of the country it operates in is not of its concern but that of government, the neoclassical theory says.

THE award to develop and operate the Ninoy Aquino International Airport won last week by a consortium headed by the San Miguel conglomerate, together with its ongoing New Manila International Airport project in Bulacan, will be a game changer that could help trigger, finally, the country’s quantum leap away from its 30-year economic doldrums since 1987.

It could be a chicken-and-egg phenomenon, of course, and it is definitely only one of myriad factors for economic growth. But the building of huge modern airports by a country has consistently historically been the harbinger, trigger or verification of its economic take-off.

Many factors explain this: it makes it easy for foreign capital and their executives to travel to and from the country to supervise their investments, thus encouraging more ventures; it makes imports and exports to the country, especially of light but high-value airline-borne products, reliable and fast; it gives tourism a boost; it is a catalyst for the growth of other industries, even of entertainment and mall enterprises.

A FEW friends abroad, mostly scholars and Philippine watchers, emailed me last week to ask: “Are things there getting really bad?” They were mainly referring to National Security Adviser Eduardo Año’s screaming statement, bannered by several media outlets: “Any secession move to be met with force.”

Not to be outdone, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said: “The military will use its forces to quell and stop any and all attempts to dismember the Republic.”

It is these two officials’ blabbering that should be quelled. They were brainlessly reacting to former president Rodrigo Duterte’s statements at a sparsely attended, little-reported press conference in Davao City last week about “regrouping” Mindanao leaders led by former House speaker and current Davao del Norte 1st District Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez to push for what has been called the “Mindanao initiative.”

AFTER much thought and research, I am convinced the recent kerfuffle over amending or revising the Constitution is so misplaced — I’m close to using the adjective “mindless” — that its hidden goal, as it was when President Fidel Ramos first tried it, is merely to establish a parliamentary system that would be a venue for House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez’s ascension to power.

There are more pressing matters for Congress to tackle, among them our electricity rates, the highest in the region and double that of Vietnam and China, the two countries that have been the favorite destination of foreign capital in the past two decades.

The Senate move to have only the Constitution’s provisions restricting foreign investments lifted is simply a diversionary move in response to the House of Representatives’ campaign through the dubious bungling outfit Pirma (People’s Initiative for Modernization and Reform Action) to establish that parliamentary system.

Except for Sen. Sherwin “Win” Gatchalian, who gullibly believed the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) report that we have the most restrictions on foreign investments among 84 countries, after the war-torn Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Libya, there is really no other legislator, even in the Lower House, passionate about the lifting the remaining constitutional limits on media, advertising and a handful of other strategic industries.