New year wish list for the country

The so-called dead week after Christmas and before New Year is one of my favorite times of each year. Life is less frantic as the holiday frenzy winds down, traffic is a bit more bearable and everything else is in a slow motion of sorts.

It’s a welcome respite because throughout the year, at least in our chaotic news cycle, there are times when life feels like a constantly burning building.

I sometimes use this time to ponder on what I’d like to see happen in this nation of 120 million in the new year and beyond.

So here’s my wish list for 2025.

A stronger economy

The Philippine economy is amazingly resilient, thanks to dollar remittances from the millions of overseas Filipinos and the services sector, which accounts for more than half of our economic output.

But the economy needs to grow at a faster pace to address the stark income inequality in the country. Growth must be targeted to reduce poverty in the poorest parts of the country.

We’ve made strides in reducing poverty – falling by two-thirds – from 49.2 percent in 1985 to 16.7 percent in 2018.

Yet inequality remains high: the top one percent of earners together capture 17 percent of national income, with only 14 percent being shared by the bottom 50 percent, the World Bank said in 2022. This is still pretty much how it is today – or perhaps even worse.

To address this, the government must adopt fiscal policies such as a progressive tax system that translates to more income for poor Filipinos. The government must also create more jobs and raise the income of the poorest workers.

I hope the implementation of the CREATE MORE Act, which aims to attract more investments into the country, will indeed be able to add more jobs to the economy.

A system that works

This then brings me to my second wish – a system that works for each and every Filipino and not just for a powerful few.

When you walk the streets of Metro Manila, or ply its roads, you get the sense that it’s every man for himself, striving to get ahead of everyone else as they earn a day’s living. You’ll feel this in the jeepney driver speeding past you; the ride-hailing motorcycles squeezing into every space on the road to make it to their destination or the hawkers peddling whatever they can.

This is because everyone is trying their best to survive. It is indeed every man for himself, especially among the poorest of the poor. They know they only have themselves to rely on because they feel the system has failed them big time.

We can change this by fixing the bureaucracy and making it more responsive to the needs of the people.

I fervently wish to see the day when every barangay center, city hall and government agency makes it easy for citizens to get the services they are entitled to.

I was recently at the Department of Social Welfare and Development to secure a travel permit for a minor and I was impressed by the social workers who attended to my needs.

The line was long – I was there for almost three hours – and I felt like the process could be so much faster but at least I didn’t have to deal with gruff government workers. The DSWD personnel I encountered were all accommodating and helpful – a big thank you to the staff at the DSWD-NCR travel clearance office. This is how civil servants should be – genuinely happy to serve the citizens.

I hope to see more of this.

Education and health services

In one of the Viber groups I was added to, some members are neo-liberals who feel that both education and health services shouldn’t be the responsibility of the government, saying that this hurts state coffers.

I disagree. It is the mandate of the government to ensure that its citizens have access to quality education and health care.

It is scary to imagine a society that does not prioritize education and health care for its citizens. Even our neighbors in the region, including Malaysia and Indonesia, offer quality education.

As for hurting state coffers, it is corruption that leaves gaping holes in the government’s budget.

Less corruption

This brings me to my fourth wish, which is less corruption. Less is more realistic than zero. Zero is impossible, given the greed of people in power and even those in the less powerful positions in the bureaucracy. It is sad that corruption is so entrenched in our way of life.

A ranking Bureau of Customs official once told me that the economy will collapse if corruption is eliminated.

Corruption, she said, makes the economy go round because the corrupt spend a lot and this has a ripple effect on the economy.

To a certain extent, this is true but, in the end, this only favors the elite and the powerful because corruption perpetuates a system that benefits them.

Thus, I wish that the corrupt would moderate their greed.

No more monstrous traffic jams

And finally, I wish traffic in Metro Manila would improve significantly so that we can do more with our lives instead of being stuck on the road for hours on end.

These are what’s on my wish list for 2025 – not just wishes, but aspirations for a better nation.

I hope there’s a genie listening.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.