Envy aliens who can avoid PH; pity Pinoys who are stuck here

He’ll never return to the Philippines, said the Thai tourist whose cash was filched by Manila airport security personnel. Not only that, he’ll tell his countrymen to never book any airline, hotel or service bearing the name of the Philippines and its cities.

He’s so incensed at his ordeal. An x-ray screener picked his wallet on the conveyor tray and slipped the bills to accomplices. A companion of the victim had videoed the crime. The pickpockets took them to a room to return the money, but let them board their flight only after the companion deleted the video.

He’s lucky. Envy foreigners who can avoid the Philippines.

Pity Pinoys. They’re stuck in this hellhole they call country. To begin with, their taxes will pay the government’s P1.27-billion tourism promo that the crooks have just wasted.

Philippine airports teem with outlaws. Luggage are forced open and looted. Immigration men let unwanted aliens in and out for fat fees. Days after the Thai’s story went viral, another security screener stole a Chinese traveler’s watch. Those thieves have been with Office of Transport Security for years; their recruiter must be the gang boss.

Pinoys aren’t going anywhere. Their futures are blighted. Half the labor force is under- or unemployed. Two in five of their children are undernourished, underweight and stunted. Grade-schoolers score lowest in international math, science and reading comprehension tests. No skills for hi-tech tomorrows.

Everyday 21,000 Pinoys are able to fly to overseas jobsites. For two years or so they labor long hours to send the family money to fix the leaky roof, buy a shared mobile and be able to worship in Sunday best.

Then they return to the old squalor. Garbage in streets and waterways. Deadly flashfloods and mudslides. Forest denudation and hillside quarrying. Noise, dust, traffic, crime, corruption.

Only oligarchs and politicos become richer. The top nine tycoons’ wealth equals that of the 110 million population’s bottom half.

Oligarchs bankroll election campaigns. Politicos in turn place oligarchs’ point-men as industry regulators. Utilities are thus monopolized: transport, telecoms, electricity, water.

Cartels control food supply and prices. Wholesalers of domestic harvests are themselves importers and warehousers. At their mercy are growers and consumers of rice, corn, onion, garlic, ginger, vegetables, fruits, fish, poultry, pork, even fertilizers and feeds.

Onion retail rates skyrocketed to P780 a kilo, more than 22 times the world price. Cereals, spices, chicken, egg and meat remain costly.

A P44-billion “government-sponsored smuggling” has just unraveled. Without open public bidding, Malacañang favored with import permits only three huge sugar shippers. One for 240,000 tons worth P24 billion; two for 100,000 tons each, P20 billion for both. They can sell at the prevailing price of P100 per kilo.

At the same time the three shall control the buy-up of domestic harvest and thus dictate farmgate prices. Official orders designate the triopoly in blatant disregard of the Constitution and anguish of planters.

Political dynasts hold the presidency, vice presidency, legislature and local governments. They grant each other illegal pork barrels. Executive officials get multibillion-peso unaudited confidential and intelligence funds. Congressmen help themselves to more billions in fake flood controls. Result: hunger, disease, disaster, deaths.

Pinoys don’t even know if they truly elected those dynasts. Comelec hierarchs withhold public records of the last ballot count.

The dynasts are rushing to put relatives and gofers in a constitutional convention. The Con-con’s primary aim is to extend elective terms – for tighter economic stranglehold.

Three hundred delegates will each receive P10,000 daily stipend – P3 million a day extra burden to Pinoys – on top of meals, hotel billeting and transport. Yet economic managers vehemently oppose any wage increase, because supposedly “inflationary and bad for the economy.”

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