Welcome Remarks of Sec. Teresita Quintos-Deles During the Closed Door Cabinet Session on the Presentation of the WB WDR 2011
Astoria Plaza, May 10, 2011
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for coming here. Looking at faces around the table, we are assured that this is going to be an interesting and stimulating discussion. This session that we will have with Mr. Nigel Roberts revolves around the theme, “Conflict, Security, and Development.” It’s indeed most timely. In fact, I would even say that our coming together today may be a proof that there is such a thing as serendipity.
As everyone knows, this government believes in the objective of bringing all armed conflicts to a close, and that peace will need to be won not just on the negotiating table but on the ground. So, as everyone knows, we also have a complementary track with the peace negotiation: a program to bring development and security to conflict areas, which we call PAMANA – Payapa at MasaganangPamayanan (translates as “Peaceful and Prosperous Communities”) – which also means “legacy.”
While we work to define the meaning of conflict-affected areas, and while we work to bring convergence of government areas into identified conflict areas, we knew this would not mean doing development in the business as usual mode. We knew that if we were really to bring development to a real difference on the ground in these conflict areas, we would need to learn to do things differently. We needed to do that because we know that development in fact sometimes can bring about new sources of conflict, new causes of inequity, new sources of grievance.
We know that conflict involves not just the wounds that are seen to the eye, and that our communities suffer layers of hidden wounds that must be addressed if we are going to move out of this conflict situation. We knew of too many cases all over the world of massive development aid being brought into what are supposed to be post-conflict situation, and yet, years later, there is still conflict, there is still no peace, and in terms of development, the areas remainimpoverished. We knew that for PAMANA, we will have to do things differently and to bring a new element into the exercise. We thought that this will be something that we will develop over time, as we scramble to bring the programs together and to map our actions in terms of budget and areas.
A few weeks ago, we met with the main agencies involved in PAMANA including the Secretary of Budget, Secretary Butch Abad (who texted me this morning that he will be unable to come due to a bad stomach). Secretary Abad brought the point that for PAMANA, we do not want to do just funding for the usual roads and infrastructure projects. The PAMANA budget cannot look like the usual budget directed into certain conflict areas. The human infrastructure of this program needs to be more defined to show how it is different from the usual development interventions. For OPAPP, this meant the need to do, quickly, such a road map and a plan.
I remember that before I took office and before I knew I was going to join government, I attended an FGDin Jakarta which is part of the series of consultations being conducted in preparation of this World Development Report. I remember that the framework introduced to us then resonate significantly with our own experiences here, so I made a mental note to look into that more closely. So recently I dug out the paper I have from Jakarta, and there is also a more recent executive summary from Fermin Adriano. But also, the people from OPAPP googled the report and found that it was in fact already available online. But even better than that, we found out that the head of the World Bank team that had done this report is now coming to the Philippines. I thought, this is what is called serendipity. This miracle will help accelerate our ongoing discourse. It is a very timely discussion as we grapple with the hard issues on our different peace tables and on the ground. I am happy to report that this discourse and this process has been deepened and enriched by the involvement and participation of not only the Cabinet Secretaries, but also of our security forces. There is, among us, a coming to the common point of view that we cannot do things the way we used to do them. We need to review our indicators and the units that we use to measure the progress of our work.
I told Nigel that what we are trying to do might be something that is unprecedented, because of the various conflict lines that we are attempting to cross – such as conflicts arising from breakaway groups, and breakaway of breakaway groups, the splintering that has been happening, ceasefire agreements and even final peace agreements that have been signed in 1986 that had taken circuitous processes under various presidencies with no closure up to now. We have in fact, as Chairman Leonen had shared, a unique experience with the MILF with whom we are negotiating for grounds that had already been subjected to a final peace agreement.
We are trying to conjure and strengthen fortitude in the face of enormous challenges we are facing. So, having this discussion on the World Development Report, coming so soon after its publication, is a very welcome opportunity for us. It will bring to us, in the fastest way possible, lessons from peace and conflict situations all over the world both in terms of best practices and worst situations and scenarios, as well as insights about the dilemmas, the predicamentsof peacemakers all over the world.
We do look forward to getting the most out of this morning’s discussion. This is a very happy coming together of our negotiating panels, Cabinet Secretaries, senior officers involved on the ground, and officers from the security sector, as we endeavour to close the ground between what happens on the table and what happens on the ground. As I’ve said earlier, it has been a positive development as we started this conversation on many levels in government, there is clear evidence of people coming to what may become an “a-ha” moment as we examine what we need to do differently to bring armed conflict to a close in this country.
This is not a first conversation for those of us here but this is our first conversation with the World Bank for this particular discourse. I had already received the promise by Mr. Hoffman that this need not be the last, and they will be happy to interphase with us for accelerating the discussion, including, when possible, sharing in the work of mentoring and pooling the lessons from all over the world from the World Development Report.
Thank you very much. I’m looking forward to a very stimulating discussion.
