Ople eulogy

Barely had the dust settled on Ople's corpse than some people began raising doubts--and eyebrows--on the old man's legacy. The doubts were triggered by the president's calling Ople a hero and a statesman and the profuse euologies delivered in the Senate, where Ople was called inter alia a demigod.

Teddy Casiño has fired what I think would be a first salvo. In his yesterday's column on Business World, which unfortunately is unavailable online, he delivered a eulogy a la Mark Antony.

Ople did fairly well as foreign secretary. What especially endeared him to me was the strident representation made by the DFA at the ASEAN supporting the Burmese democracy movement. The Philippines during his term was the most vocal in calling for Burma's military government to engage with the opposition. (But then again others would point to his kowtowing to Bush for the war in Iraq.)

Ople though is criticized mainly for serving Marcos as labor secretary until 1986 when the regime was unceremoniously booted out. Ople was, more than any other person save Marcos, responsible for the brain drain in the country. It was during Ople's office at the Labor Dedaprtment that the policy of exporting the country's labor was first concocted to stave off popular unrest. By exporting the country's labor, the Marcos goverment got dollar remittances to stave off irreversible economic decline and, more importantly, got rid of the people who would otherwise constitute the politically modernizing class had it not been for their overseas jobs. It was a neat plan and it worked until 1986.

Who knows how long Marcos could have lasted without the safety valve provided by this policy of massively exporting the country's labor. Maybe shorter. A lot shorter.