TIME was when the Philippine elite’s mantra, what they saw as nearly the cure-all for everything that ailed the country, was “globalization.”

It was former president Fidel Ramos who practically made it a national policy. He ingrained the doctrine so much into the ruling class’ consciousness that the capture of even our key telecommunications industries by “global” companies like Hong Kong’s First Pacific Co. Ltd. and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pvt. Ltd. — even through a patent violation of our Constitution — has been nonchalantly accepted, even to this day.