Are we, or aren’t we?

In crisis, that is. Fiscal crisis.

Last Monday, the President said we were. But no sooner had the dire words left her mouth than her economic managers began to backpedal, sidestep and shimmy around the terrible declaration. She was speaking "rhetorically but not theoretically," said one. Maybe she said it to scare the public and prepare us psychologically to accept new taxes. It was just a "wake-up call", a "call to arms", said another, and in reality we are not anywhere near that state. They trotted out the technical requirements for being in a fiscal crisis: a country has to be in default, lose access to the capital market and not be able to finance its budget deficit–all of which we are not. Yet.

The language got creative: the government has "serious fiscal problems" but not to the extent of a "full-scale fiscal crisis"; what we have is a "public sector management problem". I think what they’re saying is that we are sort of but not quite pregnant.

So on Tuesday they began serving only tea and coffee instead of merienda at Malacañang, as part of an austerity program. If they’re serious about austerity there’s one concrete thing that they can do immediately: Government officials (and their families–especially their families, I might add) should garage those gas-guzzling Expeditions and Suburbans that their back-up security details charge around in and use much less sosyal vehicles, like AUVs or regular sedans–or, better yet, give up at least one of the several back-ups they travel around with. Think of how many vehicles that would be off the roads–a boon to the traffic problem as well.

For the average Pinoy, austerity is not something to be implemented; it is the reality lived day in and day out. We forego one perk or another not because of a sudden sense of sacrifice but because the family or individual budget does not allow for it. We turn lights off and monitor the use of air conditioners because the electric bill is eating up an ever increasing chunk of the household budget–and with the new increase it will be even more of a challenge.

The President at least acknowledged as much when she said last Monday, "Average Filipinos are already taking the brunt of sacrifices..." But when she says in the same breath, "The pain is imminent but it will be shared fairly and without putting one over the other..." I cannot help but wonder whether "pain" means the same thing to the legislator or Cabinet secretary or the crony (yes, they’re still around) businessman as it does to the struggling Pinoy making sabit at the back of a jeepney, the factory worker facing a possible lay-off or the housewife faced with rising prices each time she goes to the palengke.

This "almost crisis" should be a wake-up call not for the man in the street Pinoy but for the people in Malacañang and the Senate and Congress and Cabinet, because the rest of us folks have been feeling the "fiscal crisis" for a long, long time.