Since 1986, the Philippines has been undergoing six-year cycles as embodied in the 1987 Constitution. There is no long-term continuity of policies because every President brings with him or her, his own team, which means policies change each and every time. Add to this the absence of a strong party system and what we have is anarchy and chaos as reflected in the quality of life of the average Filipino.
Only the rich get to live comfortably in their enclaves, either in the city or the provinces, where they have their vacation houses, with their househelp at their beck and call waiting on them hand and foot. The greater majority of Filipinos have to suffer through barely surviving on the basic wage or worst, be a contractual employee bouncing from job-to-job.
Our economy is consumption-driven. It should be export-driven given the natural resources we have but we don't produce enough for our own consumption. We can't even feed ourselves and rely on imports for the most basic agricultural commodities.
If it weren't for OFWs and the BPOs, our economy would've been sunk a long time ago because our exports aren't enough to bring in the needed foreign exchange. Labor is our main export now. This is why OFWs are described as the bagong bayani's.
Most of our regional neighbors are more progressive now compared to us. While some, like Thailand and Indonesia, have undergone some extent of political turmoil, they have still managed to get back on track. Indonesia is now surging past us while Thailand has long left us behind.
What exactly is the the plan of our political leaders going forward?
Herein lies the problem. There doesn't seem to be any. It's no different than what's been laid out by every administration since 1986. Talk about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time.
Most of our regional neighbors have progressed in a generarional cycle defined as thirty years. China is credited with eradicating poverty in the same time frame. Vietnam isn't quite there yet but has become the alternative to China for manufacturing in the region. Next are Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. We continue to be the laggard.
There's no need to reinvent the wheel and we can always copy the strategy but implementation is where we fail miserably. Planning is absent. You can't implement a long-term development plan when government changes every six years.
Our local government heads don't have vision either which is why regional development suffers. The pandemic was disruptive but we still didn't take advantage of plugging the weaknesses it exposed in terms of the economy.
I got the above message from a millennial friend visiting Vietnam for the first time. I told him that when I was last there in the 90s it wasn't that developed yet but the potential was there. The Vietnamese have tapped that potential.
A boomer friend who used to work for Herdis Group before told me the story that in the mid-70s they sold broken rice to Vietnam because they didn't produce enough rice to feed themselves. Now they're one of the top exporters of rice and is our top supplier. How the roles have been reversed in a short span of time.
We should probably be referred to as the most insecure country in the region. We don't have food security. We don't have energy security. We have an infrastructure deficit. We are one of the least mobile countries in the region. The metropolitan Manila area is in the top five with the highest population density in the world.
We continue to wallow wasting our time on petty matters. The national discourse has gone down the proverbial toilet. What we have now as public intellectuals are propagandists on either side of the political divide. It's not about country but power and money. Always.
As a soon to be senior citizen, I have been witness to history from 1986 up to the present. I don't see any reason to hope that there would still be an improvement in the country, that we could even catch up with Vietnam and Indonesia. Why? We can't even fix the national capital region. It's a nightmare to live and work in the capital.
NEDA just made public the Philippine Development Plan. This is the long-term development plan with the goal of becoming a middle-income country by 2040. The jury is still out on 2023. No economist can predict if there will be growth or recession.
Covid is rearing its ugly head again in the US and China. There is the Russian-Ukraine war and the US continues to tighten the screws on China over trade and the Taiwan issue.
While one can hope, one should be realistic too. It doesn't help that six months into his Presidency, Marcos still can't find his footing.
It remains to be seen if Marcos will upend the system that hasn't worked and change it to something that will or at least has a chance of doing so. The signs don't look good as early into his term, there's no clear direction.
The sovereign wealth fund is being pushed as a driver of foreign direct investment but his Cabinet is also pushing for privatization of key government assets to fund the deficits.
Marcos is a disappointment but having Robredo as President would've been a disaster so we have to settle for the lesser evil.
As a practicing stoic, I resolve to lessen my involvement in things I can't control. At this point, the best thing to do for those who are my age is to move to the province where life is simpler and the cost of living is lower. There's not much one can do with the Gen Z's and the millennials. I fear the day when they will be at the seat of power and we have achieved what we actually seem headed to which is the title of the laggard of the region.
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