G-20’s promises and deficits

By Fr. Antonio Cecilio Pascual in Business Mirror

‘There is no room for complacency,” so reads the draft G-20 document, as reported by Reuters, as the global recovery is “uneven and fragile.” This weekend in Toronto, the leaders of the developed economies are expected to come to an agreement on, among other things, reducing huge government deficits.

The World Bank has urged them in no uncertain terms to focus on long-term growth, “to help developing countries which rely on revenues from commodity exports, worker remittances, foreign direct investments and aid.”

For a while there, it sounded like they were all aware of, and pondering about P-Noy’s foreboding inheritance of a deficit in millions of pesos. In fact, if P-Noy’s plan of unearthing the real costs of debt and aid that the Arroyo administration incurred in her nine years yields larger figures than the estimates he is getting now, our country rating will probably take a worse turn than the current BB, even before his first 100 days are over.

Traveling around the nation, visiting government projects to see for myself their impact on the lives of our poor prior to the “Pinoy Ako” informercial I taped as part also of my last few days as private-sector cochairman of the Flagship Programs Committee of the Arroyo administration, I couldn’t help but feel the restlessness in the countryside. Agricultural lands being converted for commercial uses, rivers reclaimed for condominiums. “Alam n’yo po, Father, mabuti pang mamatay kaming lumalaban kaysa mamatay sa gutom.”

It made me recall one of the most important G-20 promises last year that Caritas Internationalis documented: 0.7 percent of their incomes are to be spent on overseas aid. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has been tracking this and had earlier reported that overseas aid was actually short of $21 billion in 2009 of pledges made. Estimates for additional public financing for food security that will be further affected by climate change—like Ondoy and Pepeng—is already at $195 billion a year by 2020 to support only the poor countries to mitigate food crises and to develop sustainably. And then what to do with the commitment to keep global warming to below 2 degrees Centigrade when, to shrink budget deficits, we will most likely see unbridled industrialization—the better and faster to sell commodities to rich nations, while paying higher taxes.

Executive director Michael Casey of the Development and Peace/Caritas Canada said, “Faced with hunger in many parts of the world, Caritas believes that agricultural policies must promote the small farmer and local food production. G-20 countries must show the necessary leadership to reverse disastrous food policies of the past. Aid commitments must also be met. We need more aid, better spent. And we need to see effective action on climate change.”

The credo of Robert K. Greenleaf, founder and advocate of servant leadership, comes to mind: “This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person to person, now most of it is mediated through institutions—often large, complex, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.”

We need not just servant leaders, but servant leaders who can turn institutions into institution-servants—neither institution-regulators who seek compliance at any cost, nor institution-witchhunters who ferret out culprits at any cost. Would a corrupt-free institution be possible? A deeper question: Would a corrupt-free institution be a caring institution, a true institution-servant?

Stephen Covey, sheds some light on how institutions can transform to institution-servants: “You’ve got to produce more for less, and with greater speed than you’ve ever done before. The only way you can do that in a sustained way is through the empowerment of people. And the only way you get empowerment is through high-trust cultures and through the empowerment philosophy of leaders that turns bosses into servants and coaches. Based on practice, not talk, [it] will be the deciding point between an organization’s enduring success or its eventual extinction.”

Today, as we also celebrate the feast of St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, I recall how in the 1950s, the Holy See approved the idea of the Opus Dei accepting non-Catholics and non-Christians as cooperators to assist in projects and programs without being members. For decades, we saw the mushrooming of agricultural-training centers, hospitals and clinics, primary, secondary and professional schools.

The deficit problem is really an attention-deficit disorder: we have not focused attention on the heart of the global recovery; we cannot let other countries and sectors of populations to grow at the cost of asking other nations and sectors to step on the brakes or tighten their belts to their bones. The truth of this path that St. Josemaria has lit up is the fact that we are all in this together—and because we are, more good becomes possible.

Let us reflect, with Pope Benedict XVI, as he calls attention to the chalice and paten in every Mass: “Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.... As we proclaim the Cross of Christ, let us always strive to imitate the selfless love of the one who offered himself for us...the one in whose person we speak and act.”