OF SUBSTANCE AND SPIRIT
While the political dynamics remains fluid and uncertain, the only information available to us at this point is that we have five serious presidential candidates. They are Mayor Domagoso, Senator Lacson, former Senator Marcos Jr., Senator Pacquiao and Vice President Robredo. I crossed out Senator de la Rosa because he admitted he was only instructed to file his candidacy hours before the deadline. To many, this admission trivialized his candidacy, reduced him to a placeholder, and diminished his membership in the Philippine Senate.
Given the latest moves of the President’s children in the Davao politics, everything is possible in the presidential battle before Nov. 15. Brinkmanship has become popular in an electoral exercise since President Duterte executed his plan to run for president by substituting for Martin Diño past the Oct. 17, 2015 deadline then.
Whether the same script would work six years later is arguable. It has been abused, it is deceptive and it enables fake news to proliferate. Worse, its pioneer is struggling against the stigma of bad governance and corruption. We can only have the deepest economic recession to show. Economic scars are yet to heal.
Come to think of it, our young and old voters alike should be able to discern with a little history and a simple comparison between the candidates’ declared political intent and their personal integrity, competence, and actual accomplishments. If they don’t believe every meme, tiktok and snippet as Gospel truth, our electorate would find it easy to unmask the candidates who pretend they could transform the Philippines into a great nation like some of our neighbors in East Asia without even telling us the roots of all our troubles. Or those who talk of big things like change, rising from the traumatic crisis of this pandemic, or healing this nation without justice.
Our 110 million people deserve more than a manifesto. They need to see a concrete plan of action that is doable on day one of the new administration, or on July 1, 2022.
One simple test is to ask the candidates about the economy and what they plan to do in the first 100 days of their leadership. Here, those with a good familiarity with how an economy works should have a distinct advantage. Relevant experience should help. Most of all, the support of a very competent and conscientious team is crucial.
How do they propose to explain our economic performance in the last three quarters of 2021? Third quarter GDP growth actually lost momentum from 12.0 percent in the second quarter to 7.1 percent. If earnings from abroad are considered, our gross national income also slowed down from 6.8 percent to 2.8 percent.
While showing some signs of recovery based on deseasonalized quarter-on-quarter growth of 3.8 percent from a drop of 1.4 percent in the second quarter, we continued tosuffer from inadequate job opportunities.
True, unemployment moderated from 8.03 percent in the second quarter to 7.97 percent in the third quarter, but underemployment actually worsened from 14.57 percent to 16.6 percent.
Good candidates know that these numerals should never be ignored in preparing their economic platform.
For instance, an unemployment rate of 8.9 percent in September 2021 translated into 4.25 million jobless Filipinos, or nearly nine out of 100 in the labor force. Given the average family size, around 16 million had practically no source of income and therefore they have no means to buy food or medicine, or pay rentals and utilities. Unless the economy actually turns the corner in the last quarter of 2021, they are all looking to a bleak Christmas, or even a dark future.
An underemployment rate of 14.2 percent in September 2021 means roughly 6.78 million Filipinos found their current jobs inadequate to meet their families’ needs and they were prepared to take on more work or work for longer hours.
It is pointless to blame these labor market woes to the strict lockdown for the economy’s sluggishness and the typhoon for agriculture’s lame performance. Like explaining a person’s death, they were just the proximate causes. More fundamentally, we failed to secure our people’s health and security. We neglected public health system for years — decades, even — that our facilities were easily overwhelmed by the pandemic surge. Everyone suffered including those with business, or with nothing else to lose.
Who among our candidates could explain how to make our growth performance more sustainable, self-sustaining and inclusive? This vision should transcend mere aspiration but usher in reality. We need to mainstream the poor and the powerless in Philippine society.
But when the campaign starts for national candidates on Feb. 8, 2022, the electorate should expect some of our presidential candidates to engage in “reverse Darwinism.” Rolf Dobelli of The Art of Thinking Clearly explains this to mean that whoever produces the mosthot air might be rewarded with the juiciest position.
It’s about time we stopped strategic misrepresentation from fooling us again.