NAIA Terminal 1 Rehabilitation

Make this happen for the rehabilitation of the Philippine national airport. We have the money. We have the world-class designers, architects, and engineers. This design is allegedly from Holywood-caliber designer, Kenneth Cobonpue, a Cebuano!

We have the skilled construction workers who were the labour force who built some of the major infrastructure projects in the Middle East, East & Southeast Asia, Africa, and the US. We have the creative real estate developers such as Ayala, DMCI, and SM.

What's missing? As always, it's the will to make this a reality! What to do with our huge surplus of last year? Spend them and invest in job-creating projects like the renovation of airports. It's good for incomes, employment, profits, productivity, future tax base, investments, and overall development. To me, it's just perfectly fine for PNoy to run a budget deficit so long as we invest in job-creating projects.

P.S.1. Given Metro Manila's overburdened landscape, I think that the government should seriously consider moving our country's main airport to the Clark International Airport sooner than later.

P.S.2. The longstanding investments disputes over the NAIA-3 between the Philippine government, Germany's Fraport AG, and the Filipino-Chinese PIATCO should be put to an end. Determine reasonable compensation to the developer-contractors and ensure another competitive bidding for its renovation and operation that is free from corruption. Importantly, make sure justice is served against the corrupt who have sabotaged the nation's transportation function, plundered the government's treasury, and impeded our society's development progress.

Abstract - "Capitalist Development in Contemporary Southeast Asia: Neoliberalization, Elites, and Authoritarian Liberalism in the Philippines and Malaysia"

Capitalist Development in Contemporary Southeast Asia:

Neoliberalization, Elites, and Authoritarian Liberalism in the Philippines and Malaysia

Bonn Juego

Abstract for the 5^th Annual Nordic NIAS Council Conference

Stockholm, 22-23 November 2011

There is something distinctive in the evolution of capitalism in Southeast Asia. This historical specificity of present-day capitalist moment concerns the differences in dynamics that the process of neoliberalization may have in different social contexts depending on the conflict-ridden interaction between local and transnational elite interests and on the contradictions between the political and economic imperatives of capital accumulation. Understanding the region’s complex structural relations and their attendant manifestations demands a dynamic analysis of processes, interests and transformations.

The paper will seek to identify the specificities of capitalism in Southeast Asia focusing on the contrasting cases of the Philippines and Malaysia and explain the social transformations and struggles that brought it about, producing a particular social form with distinctive dynamics. To this end, it opens up three important areas of inquiry about post-1997 political-economic transformation and social change in the region. 

• First, how has the process of neoliberalization evolved since 1997? Here the impetus given by the crises of 1997 and 2008 to the construction of new opportunities for economic restructuring and political reforms is called into question. 

• Second, how and why class relations, specifically national and transnational elite interests, shape the evolution of capitalism in the region? This examines the role of domestic and transnational political-economic elites and the extent of their respective vested interests in shaping, negotiating, promoting, or resisting neoliberal reforms. 

• And third, what particular social form (political-economic structure) is emergent in the region as a consequence of the interactions between the process of neoliberalization and the dynamics of elite interests? It also interrogates the how and why in the emergence of a seemingly contradictory social regime called ‘authoritarian liberalism’, which combines a strong state with liberal market economy, in the Philippines and Malaysia that results from conflicts in contemporary capitalist relations.

Lecture Notes on "Development: Theories, Policies, and Strategies in Critical, Historical, and Interdisciplinary Perspectives"

Lecture Notes on

"Development: Theories, Policies, and Strategies in Critical, Historical, and Interdisciplinary Perspectives" 

for the Master's Programme in Development and International Relations (DIR),

Aalborg University, Denmark

Autumn Term, 2011

Bonn Juego - Lecture on Development: Theories, Policies, and Strategies in Critical, Historical, ...



Bonn Juego - Lecture on "Development: Theories, Policies, and Strategies in Critical, Historical, ...