Adulting in our country
Whether you’re there for business or casual talk, a meetup with batchmates in high school or college often presents a moment when you suddenly feel the burdens of adulthood.
The burden is even more sharply felt because you all share memories of a golden period when you were once young and carefree. The contrast between past and present simply presents more vividly in that moment.
We’re nearing our mid-40s, but we’re still young, one batchmate insisted. And then we all start laughing. They say you start to have an idea what your friends will look like in their seventies once they turn 40. That’s not exactly a comforting thought, right?
But we’re not complaining. Sitting at the adult table has its perks. We count our blessings – a good education and the network of friends and business associates that later came with it – thanks to our parents who had struggled so hard to leave us that legacy. Our generation is in a better situation than our parents’ generation in many aspects – like in access to better education, technology, hygiene, and medical care.
Yet billions around the world are still deprived of that status. If we’re lucky, we have 50 or more years to live and that also means 50 or more years to deal with the impact of the failed social, political, and environmental policies of the post-World War II era. Climate change, for example, is already happening, and its impacts are accelerating.
Closer to home is a water crisis in Cebu, predicted long time ago but sadly multi-sectoral measures were not taken to deal with it. Now it’s been reduced to a blame game, with the MCWD heaping most of the blame for the lousy planning of our technocrats and politicians, the latter ironically pointing fingers away from themselves.
But none of that business of saving the world and the community came up in my lunch meeting this week with two college batchmates. They are now both running businesses employing many people. One needed the other to import supplies from China, and we were talking about the legal implications and the potentials risks and revenues from the deal.
Because we knew each other from way back, the conversation sometimes veered off to our keen observations of the business community, law enforcement agencies, and the bureaucracy, including the juicy rumors that percolate around them.
It’s unavoidable. Many of us in our batch have already grown old enough to establish relationships and networks at the adult’s table. And in the Philippines, that often means dealing with the corruption and ineptness underlying the stack of laws and regulations that cause headache to businessmen, especially among the young upstarts.
One of us, for example, talked about how contracts have actually become meaningless in this country because aside from it is difficult to enforce them in the court of law, people no longer honor contracts. They instead respect political connections which they use in arm-twisting others to get what they want.
Some of us are already talking of a few million pesos, and people our age, still relatively young as we are, feel insecure that if we do business in this country the right way, the vultures of corruption and an incompetent and unprofessional bureaucracy are just right around the corner waiting to rip us to pieces or get a large piece of us. Educated and trained to respect the rule of law and follow the rules, we experience a great deal of dissonance when confronted with the usual “palakasay” system in government and the corruption prevalent in law enforcement agencies.
One afternoon in Singapore a few years back, I was sitting in a hotel lobby in the business and classy side of the city. I was observing young professionals and businessmen, people of my age or even younger than I am, flipping documents and likely talking business.
I felt a sense of envy towards my contemporaries in Singapore. They are pursuing their dreams and the business and bureaucratic environment that they thrive in are helping them achieve those dreams. Their hard work and innovations are rewarded.
In the Doing Business 2019 fact sheet prepared by the World Bank Group, Singapore ranks right there on top at number two in the “ease of doing business” score. Hong Kong is number four, Taiwan 13, Malaysia 15, Thailand 27, and Vietnam 69.
The Philippines is number 124 of 190 economies in the survey.
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