A No-Pasaway Economist

“…the future is shaped by the people, by us - by our commitment or our indifference, by our despair or by our confidence.” — Winnie Monsod

On October 5, 2010, University of the Philippines Professor Emeritus SOLITA GARDUÑO COLLAS-MONSOD delivered her last lecture for the semester to her Econ 100.1 class about honor and excellence. Unbeknownst to her, it was recorded by one of her students and immediately went viral. This was unsurprising as it was one of the most moving pieces of public discourses that talked about the universality of virtue which struck a chord among a great number of netizens. In the video, she asked her students at the University of the Philippines in Diliman (UPD) to pledge that they will never cheat, leave the country or add to its problems during her last lecture for the first semester at UPD School of Economics Auditorium. A UP alumna with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics, cum laude, and a Master of Arts in economics graduate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962, who has been teaching in UPD since 1963, is known to give inspirational messages to her students during her final lectures.

"Honor and excellence," UP’s motto, was the topic of Professor Monsod’s lecture. She stressed placing honor before excellence because "we have always looked at excellence and not at honor and integrity," which has brought corruption and cheating in government. The erstwhile professor challenged her students to pursue academic excellence with honor – through hard work, discipline, honesty, integrity, and not through cheating. Dishonesty in small things would later reproduce to dishonesty in a large scale, she said. Cheating students would later become corrupt leaders. “Once you cheat,” she declared, “you are now no longer part of the solution anymore, you are going to be very much part of the problem."

Aside from reminding her students, about integrity, Monsod posed the challenge of helping the country by staying in the country: "If any of you have mga little ambitions of going abroad so that you can earn more, please disabuse yourself because by doing that, you are essentially betraying the people of the Philippines, who trusted you and who invested their money in you." (Part of the tuition of UP students are subsidized by the government using taxpayers’ money). She hilariously ended her speech with a "last threat:” "If you do your own way and add to the problems of the Philippines, Mrs. Monsod is going to haunt you from the grave... at the worst possible moments in your life!"

Professor Monsod was my Economics professor in Macroeconomics way back when I was still an accounting sophomore in UPD — almost four decades ago. One of the things that I remembered about her lectures was her extraordinary ability to simplify many of the complex economic theories in a language that even the average student (like me) can understand. Feisty and outspoken, her proclivity to inject time-honored values that lent color and substance to otherwise-barefaced theories that seemed, at first glance, detached to real-world issues. Nowhere was that astutely demonstrated than her dramatic walkout from our Economics 11 class sometime November of 1985. In that class, Professor Monsod lamented over the country’s economic indicators: Inflation was running at 35 percent and unemployment was about 23 percent throughout the Philippines. The nation's external debt was said to be $30 billion instead of the projected $18 billion, and the balance-of-payments deficit had climbed above $2 billion. Despite this, she pointed to the inordinate deficit spending in the public sector with risky and costly ventures that represented the import substitution strategy that had failed the country since the early 1950s. Despite plummeting export earnings, the government still embarked on huge expenditures these projects that necessitated more foreign bank loans. For another thing, these projects prompted imports as an income multiplier effect worked to spread income through the urban economy and to increase Philippine import propensity. Given the longstanding policy of pegging the peso to the U.S. dollar, the overvalued peso also stimulated a torrent of imports in the early eighties when such imports should have been reduced. Not surprisingly, in 1981 government spending skyrocketed to produce a deficit of 56 billion pesos (about USD480 million), of which 51 percent was borrowed from domestic sources and 49 percent from foreign sources.

She questioned the “absurdity” of Marcos’ economic advisers and technocrats, all of whom were respected alumni from UPD. “If these are the kind of products that our university produces,” she said, “what is the point to teaching economics?” Without any indication, she told the class that, “unless we see a change of government soon, I do not see the point of my being here anymore. Goodbye,” and nonchalantly left the lecture hall amid an astonished and bewildered class. She eventually, yet briefly, came back to her Economics 11 class in March of 1986 — when a new government assumed power after President Marcos hastily left the country during the heady days of the People Power Revolution in February — only to announce her indefinite leave of absence because she had accepted newly-installed President Cory Aquino’s offer to become the fifth Director-General of the National Economic Development Authority and concurrent Socio-Economic Planning Secretary, the first Filipina to assume this position.

Since then, Professor Monsod is best remembered for her role as Minister of Economic Planning and became a key architect in drafting the country’s post-Marcos macro-economic blueprint. A staunch advocate of import liberalization, her contributions to the realm of applied economics have been celebrated, not only in the Philippines, but around the world. Apart from her work as Socio-Economic Planning Secretary from 1986 to 1989, she was a member of the UN Committee for Development Planning (UNCDP) from 1987 to 2000 and the Board of Trustees of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in January 1996. She was also a member of the Board of Advisors of Human Development Report on 1993 and the Board of Advisors of South Centre, which was established to follow up the recommendations of the South Commission, organized in 1987 at the initiative of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad of Malaysia and chaired by Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, from 1991 to 1995. The Commission issued a report in 1990 entitled “The Challenge of the South,” which has since been translated in five languages.

She was later tapped to co-host in the GMA Network show “Debate with Mare at Pare” with former Pangasinan Governor and 1998 vice presidential candidate Oscar Orbos. More recently, she co-hosted the now defunct show “Palaban” with investigative journalist Malou Mangahas and former beauty queen Miriam Quiambao and hosted the weekly segment Analysis in the news program “News on Q,” which was aired on QTV. During this time, she also began a bi-weekly column in the country’s Number 1 broadsheet, Philippine Daily Inquirer. Today, she is a popular media celebrity, as she hosts a show entitled, “Bawal ang Pasaway kay Mareng Winnie” on GMA News TV; she is a member of Rappler's Board of Directors since 2018; and is a regular segment host of “Unang Hirit's Hirit ni Mareng Winnie.”

At 81, Professor Monsod never lost the fire in her belly. Exuberant, witty and wise as only she can be, she continues to inspire generations of pupils through her various works, even long after retirement from the University’s hallowed halls.