We never move forward, always backward

Filipino entrepreneurs and privately owned corporations have reached overseas and are recognized abroad as progressive and innovative. They have ballooned, expanded and intensified. Sadly, as the private sector is growing, our public service is plummeting each year.

I really pity our President not just P-Noy but all the previous ones and those who are still to come. If we do not change our mindset, our mentality, our character and our goals, nothing will happen to our country. We will continue to fall and ultimately crash.

Back in the nineties, we were already agonizing over the traffic problem. Gridlock! Even when it rained in those years, we would experience 7-hour traffic not to mention flash floods not due to nature’s fury but a man-made disaster.

Untimely roadblocks due to “repairs” and “maintenance” would cause floods causing more traffic with no officer on sight and making citizens feel abandoned. That was then and it is still a problem today but worse.

I remember my late dad would always quip that this clearly is a culmination of several decades of stupid neglect, corrupt road works and public works, infrastructure money going into the wrong pockets, the venality and indifference of politicians and bureaucrats, lack of political will to take tough steps required to improve matters, and the persistent arrogance of public officials who say that “the public be damned.”

Once he said that, “the term public service so often invoked in our so-called democracy, is the sickest joke of all. Nobody is serving the public, while officialdom, elective and bureaucratic alike, are helping themselves to the gravy at the budget smorgasbord table.

Why can’t government build sturdy roads? Why can’t the roads last for years? Why do craters suddenly appear after a heavy rain? Clearly it shows us a backward trend in terms of development and progress.

In other countries, machines do the jobs in a matter of hours not months or years. State of the art equipment is used with good cement and asphalt applicators. In this country, we are still using equipment fashioned during the medieval period. Our construction workers use old-fashioned pick-axes or shovels taking days to complete their work; creating ditches that turn into mud while also trying to steal siesta time from their working hours.  As my dad would jokingly say, our roads are hand-made – the result demonstrates the crudeness of the untrained hand.

We also have a misconception that Filipino labor is cheap. It is not. It is actually expensive. The work of one man in America, Japan or Singapore is the work of six Filipino workers per day. So, what’s happening to us? Why can’t we be more efficient and practical in producing high quality infrastructures? Why are projects of private companies of better quality and our government projects sub-standard?

Our energy problem for instance is taking us decades to resolve. Didn’t we learn from the frequent power disruptions in the nineties? What has the National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR or NPC) done all this time? They claim that they energize communities and industries to drive the economy and uplift our quality of life. I vehemently disagree. Why brag about something that is not happening. Clearly our economy is affected by the constant power failures around the country. The energy crisis that we are experiencing has dampened our spirits and killed our hopes for a better life. Susmariosep! Stop blaming the power distributors. Look at the whole picture and fix it. That is your job. That is your commitment to the nation! Be that prime mover and the forerunner you claim to be. Don’t drive us crazy!

We have been categorized as a Third World country since time immemorial. If we do not change we will be stuck in this situation for a lifetime. I bet if there is a Fourth World category, we can surely slip into it with ease. I’m not kidding. We are not progressing. As a matter of fact, we are regressing. But it is different with the private sector. They have the knowledge, discipline, manpower and the expertise. Many rely more on the private sector. Even the government wants to privatize everything. What’s the matter?

Last week while listening to the President in his State of the Nation Address, he sounded very patriotic and commended all his Cabinet members. I’m pretty sure he needed to also boost the spirits of his team but he also failed to recognize their weaknesses. Every wrong move seemed to be rationalized. With such an attitude we will never move forward. This reminds me of a quote from Inazo Nitobe (a Japanese author), “Poor is the patriot who finds no fault in his own country: for a self-righteous nation can never improve.”

How many millions of pesos worth of business are lost daily owing to the inefficiencies and inadequacies of government service? It is appalling to note that our laws and ordinances do not seem to be consistent with each government unit – from the barangay, city, municipal levels, all the way to the national level. Why can’t the heads of each government unit or agency streamline such ordinances? Isn’t there a league of cities and municipalities where mayors (representing the executive branch) or vice-mayors (representing the legislative arm) meet?

How can we move forward when our basic services are full of red-tape? Processing of business permits, city clearances and licenses take hours (sometimes the whole day and you even have to return the next day), one has to pass through 8-10 agencies with each one having their own checklist to fill out. There are way too many city requirements not to mention the barangay requirements (which sometimes contradict with the city and the national level). Then you have the so-called “fixers: who are part and parcel of every government entity whether national or local. Susmariosep! Why can’t government arrest them? In fact, they have way too many connections inside. Sanamagan!

We have been losing a lot of potential business due to our idiosyncrasies. Our working class suffers in their daily commute each day with the lack of PUVs and unsafe conditions of vehicles not to mention traffic. How many tourists are turned off by the crowded and hot airports? How many foreign investors pull out their investments and transfer to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, etc.?

The daily struggle in the toils of anarchy is torn out of the Lowest Circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. With this type of hell we are experiencing how can we move forward?

Will the President need to call Congress to grant him Republic Act No. 6826 – “emergency power” every time we have a man-made catastrophe? I think he should call for “emergency powers” to revamp this bureaucracy!

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War