PROFESSIONAL groups rarely ask the government to take urgent action on social, political and economic issues that do not have an impact on their interests. When they write to or petition the government, the issues raised have always been about them. But occasionally, these groups decide to break from their legendary timidity to ask the government to act on a particular issue that does not concern them; the call to action is normally written in very deferential terms, like the petition of meek subjects to their monarchs during the Habsburg era. These groups almost always refrain from penning petitions of power and urgency, probably to avoid ruffling feathers or offending some onion-skinned government official.

But In early July 2023, the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) broke from that tradition of timidity. It asked the government to forge a government-business-community partnership to carry out urgent public-private-community intervention to rein in a social and educational scourge: child malnutrition. Citing studies from multilateral institutions, the MAP laid out its case for tripartite action to tackle the problem in very stark terms: