Indonesia has bullet train,  and We are doing  "habal habal"

It's a shame that the Philippines, which claims to have more universities, more technocrats, more articulate people, is now being left behind by Indonesia by leaps and bounds. Indonesia has just started operating its bullet train, while the Philippines seems to be forever caught in traffic. It is bad politics, lack of vision and great leadership. The Philippines is making do with our "habal habal" mentality.

The Philippines claims to have more educated people but our country is being left behind in the race for development. We have all the brilliant people but many of them have left for abroad, making other countries prosperous. Our leaders are not inspiring us to work together to achieve a common vision. We do not have a Joko Widodo. Our politics are all transactional and trapos buy or cheat their way to power. Millions just wait for ayuda from a government that does not have a vision. The "habal habal" is the new symbol of the true state of the nation. We used to be number one in 1967 when the ASEAN was founded in Bangkok. Today, we are number seven in terms of per capita income.

We are being left behind by the small city state, Singapore, by the tiny Brunei, the giant Indonesia, the prosperous Malaysia, the burgeoning Thailand, and even by upcoming Vietnam, which was exceedingly devastated not too many decades ago by the civil war between the north and the south, instigated respectively by America and China. If the Philippines does not shape up, we will even be left behind by such backward ASEAN members like Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. It is a big slap on our face that the first democratic nation in Asia, the only Christian and Catholic member state of ASEAN is beset with too many problems and looming crises.

The Philippines today is facing a worsening poverty, deteriorating peace and order, high population, high unemployment, high inflation, a 14 trillion national debt and a looming food crisis, power crisis and an imminent risk of being invaded by China. The prices of crude oil, gasoline, kerosene and cooking gas have been raised not less than ten times every week, and the government refuses to see the impending crisis. The president goes on constant travels abroad, bringing a whole caboodle of sycophants and plain power and business brokers, and tries to assuage our fears by promising billions of dollars in foreign investments that never came.

The Philippines is just looking from a distance as Indonesia starts operating its high-speed rail project, called IHSR or locally called Kereta Cepal following a new route which is completely connecting two of Indonesia's largest cities, the capital city of Jakarta and Bandung.  Operated by a consortium, the IHSR is the first high-speed railway in ASEAN, covering a distance of 142.3 kilometers (88.4 mi) with a top speed of 350 kilometers per hour (220 mph). It is also the first high-speed rail in the whole southern hemisphere and in the entire East Asia.

Indonesia has made history while the Philippines is just looking surprised. President Widodo's bullet train will reduce the travel time between the two cities from the usual 3 hours to about 40 minutes. The Philippines could have done that fifty years ago. We could have connected Manila and Vigan and Manila and Sorsogon as early as 1972. But we were stranded aboard a "habal habal" mentality because of myopic leadership and too much corruption and dynasty politics.

 If we do not hurry up and keep pace with our ASEAN neighbors, even Laos can overtake us and leave us in the dustbin of Asian history. Shame on all of us especially on our politicians.