Press Statement of Prof.

GARY OLIVAR
May 31. 2010

Our Reply to the Bishops

We thank the bishops for their endorsement of the President's achievements

in infrastructure and economic growth and stability. The numbers are outstanding
and they speak for themselves. We also thank the bishops for recognizing her
principled stand against aggressive population management, which is consistent
with economic theory about the demographic dividend and the advantages of
having a large domestic market of your own.

We accept that much remains to be done in education, even though the President
has already built more classrooms, distributed more textbooks and scholarships,
and trained more teachers than any president before her. Education outcomes
are still mixed, which is why she formed the Presidential Task Force on Education
(PTFE) some years ago to overhaul the entire education strategy, and also why
education reform is at the very top of her legislative agenda as a neophyte
congresswoman.

But we are puzzled at the failing marks the bishops gave her on poverty,
considering the improvement over the years in poverty statistics, with self-rated
poverty of 43 pct last quarter at its lowest since the Marcos years, and the wide
array of anti-poverty programs that cushioned our poorest countrymen thru the
depths of the global recession. I am reminded of all those candidates during the
campaign who said they couldn't believe they were behind in the surveys because
of the large crowds they were seeing at their rallies. Likewise, our
daily experience with the images of hunger and poverty can persuade us that
such misery is widespread. But those images, no matter how compelling, cannot
controvert the numbers, which tell a different story--one of slow but sure
improvement in the lot of the poor.

We are likewise puzzled at the bishops’ failing marks on environment for a

President who sets aside half a day every week on these issues, who is building
one materials recovery facility (MRF) in every barangay, and who has received
international acclaim especially for her strategy of sustainable development and
her regional advocacy against climate change. Perhaps the bishops may be
opposed to any kind of exploitation of nature's resources--such as thru large
mining projects--no matter how equitable and ecologically sensitive these
projects are. If so, they should remember that nature exists for the use of man,
and that denying this truth--regarding nature as some kind of earth mother, or
Gaia--veers too close to the heresy of pantheism.

Lastly, we will simply have to agree to disagree with the bishops about issues
that long preceded and will long survive the Arroyo presidency-such as our
political culture of patronage-or issues about her personal likeability and
popularity. This is the stuff of transient surveys only, and not the impartial
judgment of history which even now is already unfolding, and which will look only
at how all the numbers posted under this President brought about a permanent
upliftment in the lives of our people