IT’S A bit disconcerting to hear President Benigno Aquino III telling Filipinos to learn agriculture from the Vietnamese. The advice at best appears to be one borne from misinformation, and at worse, another indication of our unnecessary insecurity over our country’s condition.

The Philippines after all is more developed than Vietnam, a country ravaged by wars of aggression by the French, Japanese and finally by the Americans since the start of the 20th century. Our country’s $1,890 GDP per capita, a measure of a nation’s level of development, is more than twice Vietnam’s $890.

Mr. Aquino advising Filipinos to learn from the success of Vietnam in agriculture is just like saying that residents of Metro Manila should learn farming from Mindanao since that region produces more rice than the metropolis. Vietnam is still a dominantly rural economy, with 73 percent of its people in rural areas (roughly the same proportion in Mindanao) compared to 37 percent for the Philippines. That our agricultural sector is more productive than that of Vietnam is reflected in the fact that even with much fewer people in agriculture, our agricultural value added as a percentage of the total economic output is 14 percent—close to Vietnam’s 20 percent.

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WITH HIS amnesty plan to free military mutineers, particularly former Navy Lieutenant and now Senator Antonio Trillanes, President Aquino will make plotting and participation in coups viable career paths for megalomaniacs in the Armed Forces. Congress is even being asked to rubber-stamp a distorted kind of military thinking, which in essence rejects the very idea of a parliament.

The reaction of another accused mutineer, retired Brigadier General Danilo Lim, to the proclamation lays bare the bankruptcy of this kind of thinking: “A soldier must be ready at all times to fight and defend his country, even if the oppressor is the government itself,” he said.

The question is: Who or what decides whether or not the government is an oppressor a soldier must fight? Is it Lim? Surveys? Media? NGOs? The size of demonstrations? Disgruntled fame-seeking government officials?

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IT WILL take a miracle for the Catholic Church to undertake a civil disobedience campaign against the use of contraceptives because the vast majority of Filipinos are in fact against the Church’s stand. They unequivocally support a state-sponsored modern family planning program.

According to two Ulat ng Bayan Pulse Asia surveys (October 2008 and March 2007), 82 percent of Filipinos nationwide think it is government’s duty to provide knowledge, services and materials for modern family planning methods, both natural and artificial. In Manila, considered the more informed sector of our nation, the support rises to 86 percent.

The Pulse Asia surveys also imply that the claim that the Church through its faithful can block a candidate supporting birth control from winning an election is a myth. Some 72 percent of Filipinos nationwide and 74 percent in Metro Manila in fact think it is important for candidates to include state-financed family planning in their promised programs, and that they would vote for candidates favoring such programs. President Aquino shouldn’t worry a bit that his principled stance on family planning isn’t supported by Catholics. In fact, the big majority most definitely do.

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THAT WAS what the economist Dr. Bernardo Villegas was saying in effect when he claimed, in an article in the Manila Bulletin last Sept. 19, that Philippine “population statistics are being doctored.” He had it reprinted in this newspaper a few days later with the headline, “The Philippine population is not exploding.” His article is a perfect illustration of dogmatism: “If the facts don’t fit my theory, they’re wrong facts.”

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THE WORLD Bank’s most recent analysis of the Philippine economy released last month was quite underreported, probably since, as is typical of its reports, you have to wrestle through its technocratic language.

The title itself of the study doesn’t make for exciting reading: “The Philippines: Fostering More Inclusive Growth.” It would have been covered better in the press perhaps if it was titled based on its actual topic: “Why so many Filipinos are poor, and will be poor—and their numbers will certainly grow—if little is done by government.” As is typical of World Bank reports, it is a comprehensive analysis with a long list of “to-dos” for government (e.g., more efficient tax collection, more infrastructure), which, I would say, could be a good blueprint for President Aquino’s reform programs. We focus though on two of its major conclusions on why so many Filipinos remain poor.

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THE SUCCESSFUL sale last week of the government’s $1 billion Peso Global Bonds was a vote of confidence for President Aquino’s administration, especially considering that it was undertaken less than three months after it assumed power, still a short time to evaluate a regime’s capabilities.

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THERE SEEMS to be no doubt that media contributed to the tragedy of the Luneta hostage crisis. They gave ex-policeman Rolando Mendoza the venue and the “loudspeaker” to extort the government, the main goal after all of any hostage-taker.

They gave him the monitoring system to keep tabs on what was going on around him. They even probably puffed his ego, as he was on television, in his well-ironed uniform. That televised scene of his brother being hauled off by the police probably blew his top to a murderous rage.

It would be utterly naïve though to expect that media will comply with certain “guidelines” so that the next time around, they’d behave properly, in the manner the State wants them to.

Media have their own job to do. Ordered to cover a major news event, a journalist’s worry is not over the possible adverse impact of his reportage on people, but whether he’d be scooped by his rivals in some way. Welcome to the real world.

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ONE HAS to be, or to have been, at the center of the Philippine state to realize how extremely unwieldy it is, how labyrinthine its structures are. It is like an old, huge, ocean-going ship, which requires much experience to know how to quickly maneuver, out of harm’s way especially.

The central government was not designed to deal with political crisis or security threats, such as mobs pretending to be a People Power movement, terrorists kidnapping scores of people in remote parts of the country—or a disgruntled policeman holding foreign tourists hostage.

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