A friend invited me on a road trip to Magalang, Pampanga yesterday. He wanted to take a look at a duje buggy fiberglass body that was priced at P50,000. More than reasonable since a couple of years back when I assembled one for a customer, it was P35,000.
Off we went with his younger brother and uncle who just flew in from Germany two days earlier. I met the uncle ten years earlier when he was in town for a vacation again. He's retired and opted to become a German citizen after working as the PAL station manager in Frankfurt during the glory days of the airline.
Their uncle was the first Philippine ambassador to the European Common Market in the 60s. This evolved into the present day European Union. My friend and his younger brother both spent time in Germany, studying in trade schools. Their uncle was with them and worked for PAL during those days.
This was my first trip back to Pampanga after a long while. In 2010 through 2015, I frequented Angeles buying Volkswagen Beetles and parts as I was a contractor with a company which produced Porsche 356 and 550 replicas. The bodies were made out of fiberglass and put on a Volkswagen chassis. The first iteration of the Porsche was on a Volkswagen platform. This is why replicas are still popular to this day.
The uncle lamented that ten years after he observed that not much had changed since he was last home. Things were worse he said. He said that he liked Bangkok better than Manila now because of its much improved public transport system, cleanliness and cheap food.
I could only sigh quietly in response to his comments. I had seen this coming in the 90s during my first trip to Bangkok. We were still slightly ahead of Thailand then but it was clear that wouldn't be for long with the way Thailand was focused on agriculture and exports. It was becoming a manufacturing hub.
The last time I was in Bangkok was 1998. I can see from the ASEAN Skyline Facebook page how progressive it has become. Thailand's countryside is also growing with infrastructure being built at a constant pace. It's now one of the world's leading exporters of rice and sugar. It's the automotive manufacturing hub of the Asia-Pacific region. It also has a digitization plan, Thailand 4.0 in place and will be transitioning to e-governance in a phased implementation.
The interior of Pampanga from San Fernando through Mexico and Magalang was congested. The culprit as usual, is the lack of planning by the local and provincial government. Nothing has really changed with governance at the national and local level.
I saw a lot of housing developments by the NLEX itself and near the exits. Congestion again once these housing units are occupied. The absence of a National Land Use Act is what allows the continued conversion of agricultural lands for commercial and residential use.
The uncle remarked that he's not surprised that nothing has changed in the country despite the many promises made by our so-called leaders. He also observed that while BBM was more articulate and more suited to participate in international fora compared to Duterte, Marcos can't be compared to the decisiveness and leadership exhibited by Apo Lakay.
I said that I thought Marcos would do well handling the Agriculture portfolio in a concurrent capacity because he could easily have his subordinates implement policy to get the sector back on track.
Was I ever wrong. BBM can't be compared to Apo Lakay at all. The shortages and smuggling of agricultural commodities would have been immediately addressed by FEM had he been in the Presidential seat today.
Going back to Manila, part of the Candaba viaduct was undergoing repairs again. You could see the contractor wasn't using modern equipment and there weren't enough workers to get the repairs done in the soonest time possible. Never mind the motorists inconvenience of the bottleneck causing traffic.
At the toll plaza, there were the usual long lines again despite the RFID system in place. It appears that the scanning of RFIDs isn't fast enough to maintain a smooth traffic flow at peak hours.
This is why I continue to question BBMs focus on "selling" the country to foreign investors when the priority should be institutional reforms first. But at this point, I'm beginning to see the futility of trying to fight for the country to become more progressive and for us Filipinos to one day enjoy the same level of progress our ASEAN peers are benefiting from.
Our problem is both structural and cultural in terms of the mindset we have. At the rate we're going, we might as well just focus on being the top exporter of labor to the world and import everything we need. This is where we're going to anyway.
Five years down the road when AI becomes more common in the workplace, the BPOs will disappear and more Filipinos will be looking for jobs abroad.
The government touts that unemployment is low but there is the lingering question of underemployment. What of Filipinos who are having difficulty making ends meet specially now with the high inflation regime brought about by external factors and our inability to feed ourselves?
My fear is BBM is too focused on his redemption path similar to his counterpart PNoy, who was also focused on doing better than his mother did during her time and remedying her acts of omission. Unfortunately, he didn't have the leadership needed to accomplish his tasks and we witnessed how he died a broken man. That was a tragic ending for the scion of the so-called democracy icons.
We can only hope for the best but even that is fading. You can see the chaos on the roads as "normalcy" returns even if the pandemic hasn't been declared over. Our infrastructure is still creaky and the concept of mobility in the national capital region doesn't exist at all. It's a daily struggle for workers to get to and from work.
"In 1849, French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose “ – the more things change, the more they stay the same…Turbulent changes do not affect reality on a deeper level other than to cement the status quo. A change of heart must accompany experience before lasting change occurs."
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