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BOOK REVIEWS Cesar Virata PHILIPPINE POLITICAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, 2016 VOL. 37, NO. 1, 67–79 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01154451.2016.1146487 BOOK REVIEWS Cesar Virata: life and times; through four decades of Philippine economic history, by Gerardo P. Sicat, Quezon City, University of the Philippines Press, 2014, 846 pp., PhP1200.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-971-542-741-8 This is a controversial biography of a controversial figure who was the finance secretary/minister and concurrently prime minister under President Ferdinand Marcos. Despite its length (846 pages), the book has been criticized by various intellectuals. Rigoberto D. Tiglao, columnist for the Manila Times, condemned the book because of its silence on human rights violations, political violence against Marcos’ opponents, and an apparent “account-rigging” by the Central Bank (Tiglao 2014). Resonating with Tiglao’s criticism, Professor Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem of the University of the Philippines points out the missing international context of the Cold War (Tadem 2014). Moreover, it is not an autobiography written by Virata and therefore difficult to find what Virata was actually thinking on various occasions. Yet the book is worth reading for those who are interested in Philippine political economy. This is because the author is Gerardo Sicat, the founding director general of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) from 1973 to 1981. He worked closely with Virata and the two of them were often assumed to be Marcos’ top technocrats. In other words, readers can discover what top economic policymakers thought about and what they did not pay much attention to. Along with the life and career of Virata, we can trace how he and Sicat assessed the Philippine economy and how they attempted to change it, because they were said to be two of “the Best and Brightest” in the country (c.f. Halberstam 1972). Chapter One describes Virata’s family, especially his father, Enrique Virata, who was a pensio- nado who obtained his PhD in mathematics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. According to the author, Cesar Virata can be assumed to be a son of the middle class, because his father Enrique was not rich enough to prepare a job for his son if the latter desired him to. Cesar therefore studied hard, which is the topic of Chapter Two. He entered the University of the Philippines (UP) and finished two courses: mechanical engineering and business administration. After graduating from UP, Virata went to the United States to study and received his MBA from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in June 1953. He was particularly impressed with the management studies by Frederick Taylor whose student, Lillian Gilbreth, was his teacher (50–51). Virata was trained in business school rather than in an economics department, which is evident in his early career. Chapter Three tells us of the beginning of his professional career at the Sycip Gorres Velayo & Co. (hereafter SGV), the country’s leading accounting firm, while Chapter Four highlights his career as Dean of the College of Business Administration at UP. While he worked at UP, he continued to work for the SGV, where his hard work was rewarded and he was promoted to the head of the management services division. Once Marcos came to power, he looked for someone who could help him to make the foreign direct investment law. Virata was invited to join the Presidential Economic Staff and was then appointed the first director of the Board of Investment. In May 1968, he was also appointed as undersecretary of the Department of Commerce and Industry, which was led by Marcelo Balatbat. Interestingly, Virata was not an enthusiastic advocate of liberalization (see also Tadem 2014). 68 BOOK Reviews This becomes more obvious when we shift our focus to Virata’s collaboration with Senator Jose Diokno whom Sicat described as a nationalist and populist. Sicat writes, “As a younger man, he [Virata] himself had taken the nationalist line of ‘Filipino First’ seriously” (167). In other words, he does not share Sicat’s view; Sicat believed in the benefits of liberalization and export promotion policy and disliked protectionism which, according to him, encouraged corruption. In Chapters Seven to Ten, Sicat examines Virata’s role as an international financial negotiator in the midst of the financial crisis after the 1969 snap elections. Virata was appointed as finance secretary and worked for the creation of the International Consultative Group to guarantee loans from international financial institutions. In addition, the Philippine government reformed the governing system of the Central Bank and established the NEDA in order to strengthen the macroeconomic framework. Meanwhile, Sicat argues that because of his active obligation as finance secretary, Virata was not involved in the decision to declare martial law in 1972. Chapter Ten explains the seriousness of economic conditions after the oil crisis in 1973. The Philippine gov- ernment needed a bigger budget to carry out several counter-cyclical fiscal measures but faced high interest rates on foreign loans because of the strong American currency policy at the time. Meanwhile, Chapter Eleven provides Sicat’s observations on investment and industrial policy by the Marcos administration. According to Sicat, these industrial policies failed because of the protectionist tendency of the foreign direct investment policy, which might have provided neces- sary capital for industrialization and for export promotion. One of the few relative successes can be found in export processing zones which resulted in the creation of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority or PEZA. In the midst of the economic crisis, Marcos’ health worsened and expectations for Imelda to become his successor rose among those who were close to Imelda Marcos. After briefly studying Marcos’ investment and industrial policy in Chapter Eleven, Sicat focuses on political problems, or the succession issue, in Chapter Twelve. Imelda began to step into government, especially after the Dovie Beams issue.1 She repeatedly proposed irresponsible fiscal policy as the Metro Manila Governor and then Human Settlements Minister, while Virata reiterated his objections, leading Imelda to call him “Dr. No” (420). While those who established their career because of their local or kinship ties with the Marcoses, such as Fabian Ver, Benjamin “Koko” Romualdez, and others, supported Imelda as Marcos’ successor, Marcos selected Virata as prime minister in 1981 because of the latter’s credibility among the international financial and development community. Chapter Thirteen is a candid observation on the international economic crisis in the early 1980s. A drastic change in American monetary policy resulted in the Mexican financial crisis, which con- strained the Philippines from maintaining the inflow of foreign loans due to increasing interest rates. In the midst of negotiations for international loans, Virata was informed that Benigno Aquino had been assassinated, which drove Virata into a more difficult position in the negotiations. In addition, “miscalculation” of foreign reserves in the Central Bank messed up the negotiations, which ended in the resignation of Governor Jaime Laya of the Cental Bank (see also Tiglao 2014). Because of a combination of restrictive monetary policy led by newly appointed Governor Jose B. “Jobo” Fernandez of the Central Bank and tight fiscal policy by Virata, the Philippines went into a destructive economic recession in the early 1980s. Chapter Fourteen is a general review of the notorious cronies of the Marcos administration. While at the beginning Marcos had collaborative relations with existing business leaders such as the Ayalas and the SGV, he was gradually surrounded by cronies who depended for their wealth on their connections with the president. Examples of “careless, arrogant and abusive” ones are the Herdis group of Herminio Disini and Rodolfo Cuenca of the Construction and Development Corporation of the Philippines (CDCP), which destroyed the fiscal discipline of the government and the stock market (543). In addition, there were Roberto Benedicto and Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco, who had accumulated their wealth from the sugar and coconut industries respectively. Chapter Fifteen tells of Virata’s life after the EDSA people power revolution, when he established .
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