Technocrats and agrarian reform

In a new article just posted at the Journal’s website, Eduardo Climaco Tadem of the Asian Center at the University of the Philippines, writes on technocracy and agrarian issues in the Philippines.

Entitles “Technocracy and the Peasantry: Martial Law Development Paradigms and Philippine Agrarian Reform,” the articles abstract states:

During the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos (1972–86), Filipino technocrats played a major role in conceptualising and implementing development programmes, one of which was agrarian reform – billed as the “cornerstone” of a “New Society.” But for all its vaunted expertise, the Philippine technocracy failed to assure the success of land reform and may have even contributed to its dearth of accomplishment after 14 years of lacklustre implementation. This failure can be traced to the application of a development paradigm pursued by Marcos and the technocrats with its inherent bias for elite big business concerns that clashed with the distributive justice and equity-based principles behind agrarian reform. Leading technocrats like Cesar Virata, Prime Minister and concurrent Finance Minister as well as Chairman of the Land Bank of the Philippines, the agrarian programme’s main financing institution, originally came from the academe but honed their skills in the corporate world, from where their mindsets became inextricably mired.