From the Editor
Philippine Journals Online
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From the Editor
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Stephen Henry S. Totanes; School of Social Science, Ateneo de Manila University
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Social Science
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| Description |
The Year 2007 marks another election year in the Philippines, as over 43 million Filipino voters troop to the polls to elect their local officials, congressmen, party-list representatives and a dozen senators, all of whom will serve for a three-year term until 2010, and in the case of the senators, a six-year term until 2013. Elections are an endemic feature of Philippine society—the public comes to life once the candidates for public office are known, and as the campaign period begins, the electoral fever will spread and catch on to everyone.
It is during such times that the sobering ideas and commentaries of social scientists can come into play. As the citizens grapple with countless electoral issues, it is imperative for those in the academe to provide some enlightenment upon these issues, so that voters can later on discern for themselves the paths they will take and the candidates whom they will support. The Loyola Schools Review, Social Sciences edition for 2007, offers these insights from the following articles for its readers’ reflection.
Estelle Marie Ladrido opens with a retrospective analysis of the “Hello Garci” scandal which erupted in late June 2005, revolving around the presidential elections of 2004, where President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo emerged victorious, but was later accused of “cheating” by conniving with COMELEC Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano. Applying Semetko and Valkenburg’s five frames in a content analysis of front-page news stories in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philippine Star, she finds that the “conflict frame” was most frequently employed in the coverage of the presidential crisis. She raises the possibility that in the midst of that national crisis, the news media “tend to agitate, rather than inform.”
Ma. Elizabeth J. Macapagal and Cristina J. Montiel offer us a view into the ongoing conflict in Mindanao by exploring the subjective factors that can be entrenched in such an asymmetric conflict. By interviewing 430 Muslim and Christian students from Mindanao State University in
Marawi City and asking them to state their agreement with certain belief and value statements, these psychologists discovered that the Muslim students “significantly believe more in the presence of social dominance and have more positive attitudes towards the role of religion in their lives.” Christian students were found to believe more in “gender equality,” but both Muslims and Christians do not significantly differ in their values.
Karina Galang Fernandez explores anxiety in adolescents and investigates the relationship between anxiety and a person’s cognitive motivational meaning system. Using a sample of 110 sophomore students, she posits in her study that the “more validation seeking an adolescent is in terms of motivation, the more anxious that individual would be.” She states further that “low levels of parental support predict a validation-seeking motivation and higher levels of anxiety.” As a practicing psychotherapist, she believes that these findings can help in counselling parents and adolescents on how to cope with their sources of anxiety.
From the work of journalists and psychologists, we move to the studies of three economists, who dissect various issues in Philippine society.
Noel P. de Guzman studies the simultaneous relationship between the exchange rate regime and international reserves for selected Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines and some Latin American countries for the period 1984-2004. Using a classification scheme of Reinhart and Rogoff, he tests two theories of exchange rate regime choice and finds some support “for the political economy approach indicating that exchange rate regime choice may have a strategic dimension” and does not merely rely upon the exogenous characteristics of a country. He further posits that “there is evidence to support the hypothesis that flexible exchange rate regimes have inflationary consequences.”
Cristina Manalo Bautista explores the socioeconomic factors that affect fertility in the Philippines by re-examining the role played by the parents’ education. Motivated by a similar study in Vietnam, she analyzes Philippine demographic data for 2003 and finds that the father’s education is as important as the mother’s and tests the hypothesis that “highly educated fathers tend to have lesser children.” She then offers the other strongly significant socioeconomic factors—marriage, mother’s age, education and housewife status, rural residence, the father’s agricultural work and provincial child mortality—that can be determinants of fertility.
Edsel L. Beja, Jr. conducts a different kind of “forensic accounting” to unearth what he calls the “hidden balance of payments of the Philippines.” By examining available data during the years 1990 until 2005, he finds that the balance of payments of the Philippines does not record large amounts of international transactions—amounting to almost $192 billion using 1995 prices. These findings reveal a serious defect in the government’s macroeconomic management of the country and exposes a weak capacity in the governance of international transactions.
Finally, the Jesuit historian, Jose S. Arcilla, S.J., concludes this issue by re-evaluating Spain’s colonial policy towards the Philippines during its over 333-year presence from 1565-1898. By using selected primary sources of that period, he offers a different view of judging Spain’s colonial policy by grappling with the great legal and theological minds of that empire, as they struggled with the justifications for their continued presence in the Philippines.
With these articles, the Loyola Schools Review hopes to provide its readers with substantive reflections on the various issues that may be raised in an election year—and provide a “sobering voice” to the “electoral noise” that will mark this year.
Stephen Henry S. Totanes, Ph.D.
31 January 2007
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Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University
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| Date |
2008-05-22
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| Identifier |
http://www.philjol.info/index.php/LSR/article/view/294
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| Source |
Loyola Schools Review; Vol 6 (2007); vii-ix
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| Language |
en
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| Coverage |
Philippines
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| Rights |
The individual authors assert the copyright of their works, and the Office of Research and Publications asserts the copyright of the journals under the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines [Republic Act No. 8293] and any provisions thereof. For inquiries on multiple reproduction or publication of the works, please contact orp@admu.edu.ph
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