A job is a gift: Alas not everyone has one

Labor Day is always a holiday as it is the time that we honor our working men and women who comprise the backbone of the Philippine economy, without whom we really have no economy to speak of.

Of course we expect Labor groups to rally for new wage or non-wage benefits, which I'm sure the Aquino regime cannot satisfy their demands, not because the Aquino Cabinet doesn't want to give more, but rather it is because they are really at a loss on what to do.

Again, let me remind you that after three years in office, Pres. Aquino's regime is still a student government trying to cope with situations upon situations and not resolving anything. In short, we Filipinos have lost a great deal of time and when you waste time, it can no longer be fixed. 

Worse of all, Aquino's propagandists feed the Filipino people with yellow propaganda, propping up the image of Pres. Aquino as if he is truly loved by the Filipino people, using the Social Weather Station and Pulse Asia surveys. This is why we ask… what's wrong with the truth?

But truth for the Aquino regime is propaganda that is no different from what the unlamented Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels did for Der Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, telling the German people that they were winning the war in Russia, but in truth, they just lost the battle of Stalingrad. It came to the point that their propagandists were telling the German people that they were winning the war, but Allied bombs were already falling on Berlin. That's what propaganda can do.

Under the leadership of Pres. Aquino, he plunked the biggest chunk of the Philippine budget for infrastructure on Metro Manila (rather than on the Visayas and Mindanao) because he knows that if he satisfies the people of Manila, they won't revolt against his regime. But then when his incompetent people do things for the worse, instead of firing them or asking for their resignation, Malacañang propagandists give out the flimsiest excuses for these incompetent managers to save their necks!

I'm referring to Metro Rail Transit general manager Al Vitangcol under whose management the trains of MRT have began to bog down including their antiquated ticketing systems to the point that the long lines to get into the MRT has spilled into the road below and stretched over a hundred yards from the stairway. But Malacañang spokesman Sonny Coloma instead bewailed the passengers for taking only the MRT when there are buses or taxis available for them to use. That statement became viral in the social networking sites as it is visible proof that Pres. Aquino and his regime don't care to improve the systems of this country.

With many of our systems in the government working so inefficiently, it goes without saying that Foreign Direct Investors are not lining up to plunk their investments here… but with our ASEAN neighbors who are better than the Philippines when it comes to bureaucratic red tape and ease of opening business in our country. So very clearly, the only way to bring new jobs to our shores is to make it easier for foreign investors to open up shop in the Philippines. 

Indeed the best gift that any government can give to its people is the gift of having a job. I have toured many countries and whenever I drive by their neighborhoods especially on the weekday, you see very few people around. That's because in most western countries, people are busy working their butts off to make a living. But if you drove around many of our sitios or barrios, you will see a lot of people bumming around. That's because these people have nothing better to do because they cannot find any job, perhaps because of a serious lack of education. But the biggest stumbling block to jobs is a bureaucracy gone wild.

Trade Union of the Philippines president Ernesto Herrera summed up the Aquino regime's track record in getting jobs in a press communiqué yesterday: "When the President began his term, the official national unemployment rate was 7.0 percent in July 2010. Now, the unemployment rate stands at 7.5 percent as of January 2014. We are deeply disappointed that up to now the administration has not offered-not even in broad strokes-clear-cut strategies as to how it intends to forcefully create new jobs."

How many times have we heard people repeat that famous quote of our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal, "The Youth is the hope of the fatherland." We can also quote from that famous poet Alexander Pope who once quipped, "Hope springs eternal." But with the kind of system of government that we have today, Filipinos are losing hope. No jobs means no hope!

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