Pat Ray M Dagapioso October 15, 2009

POSC 161 Hilton Aguja, Ph. D.

A CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE ARTICLE ‘LIKE FOREIGN BASES’

The President of the Philippines graciously accepted the fact that due to her

foreign travels she kept the country’s 34 quarters of uninterrupted growth. She may

have cited loans and investments from her world travels as two of the causes for

economic growth. The question then a Philippine Foreign Policy student would ask is,

at what cost?

On July 19, 2009, Philippine Daily Inquirer came up with an article that just

answers the blunt question. To compromise for huge investments and lease’s income,

a substantial amount of land for crops, for land reform, for food security, for Filipinos

had been deprived for the sake of “keeping the economy afloat.”

What does this policy of “opening-up” to the world economy tells us? Well, there

are two things we can surmise from this policy. It is either that the administration of the

dear President is contractually and maliciously made to serve the interests of the

foreign governments, while putting the Filipino’s interests at second place, which is

plainly an attribute of the countless misplaced priorities of this administration. Or does

the virus of corruption that permeated the echelons of this administration been

transmitted to each rank-and-file that delineating the worst possible contracts from the

best ones seems uncharacteristically blurred.

One thing is for sure, the mendicant foreign policy exercised by President

Arroyo will continue to haunt the Philippines and its people as she had travelled more

to London, Saudi Arabia and New York last September. No wonder the economy is

afloat, and again at grave cost.