CHAFF FROM THE GRAIN
Hector RR Villanueva
“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.” – Edmund Burke
The nation should command President Rodrigo Roa Duterte for choosing the fight against corruption, narcotics trafficking, and criminality as his mission and patriotic duty.His courageous crusade against these social evils has been tireless, frustrating, never-ending, and seemingly unwinnable.
Nonetheless, the fight against corruption and drug trafficking will go on relentlessly under President Duterte.
However, with our mania for forming task forces, a massive anti-corruption task force has been created again which is indicative of the failure of policy and implementation.
As the saying goes, “it is better to have fought and lost than never to have fought at all”.
President Duterte is determined to ferret out the corruptors and malefactors.
Across the sea, the Philippines would have been better off under a re-elected Donald Trump who has a soft spot for the Philippine and President Duterte.
A Biden admin will likely be ambivalent and indifferent as its greater focus and priority will be the Europe reconciliation and China.
It is also expected that the human rights advocates and critics will be emboldened and to increase their criticisms of the Duterte administration under a Biden presidency.
There is rampant corruption because there is so much opportunities and money to be made in the government, such as, at the Customs with smuggling and imports, tax evasion at the BIR, RFID, Public Works and Highways, Transport and Communications, and harbor development to name a few.
A good example is the monopoly granted to the toll corporation for the exclusive use of RFID on the highways which is a bottomless “cash cow” that is simultaneously dismisses and eliminates tellers and employees from toll booths causing hardship and suffering.
The motoring public should have the option to use cash or RFID as they do in Europe.
In the meantime, the inter agency task force, or IATF, which is in charge of COVID-19 pandemic needs re–invigorating, upgrade, and revamp of membership by sending some of the cabinet members to pasture, and appointing more experts and technical people to the IATF.
By mid-2021, ambitious politicians will be gearing, and amassing wealth, for the 2022 general elections, and like in the United States, the hot issues will be the handling or mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and economic recovery.
While President Rodrigo Roa Duterte has vowed to step down in 2022, the main issue against the president, or his favored successor, will be the slow economic revival, the COVID-19 pandemic, human rights, corruption, and the impasse in the West Philippine Sea.
There is so much unfinished business and very little time left to do them.
You be the judge.