MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
Because he speaks the language of the people (in a shade shy of PRRD’s colorful street talk and hilarious hyperboles), it’s easy to see where presidential candidate Manny Pacquiao is coming from and where he wants to go.
The day after the faded commemoration of people power, the senator did the math and hit the nail on the head. It’s been 36 years since the “revolution” on EDSA, he recounted, and “nothing has changed in government,” prompting him to vow a “2022 revolution against corruption” should he win.
Thirty-six years, six presidents leading six governments, each with their own promises of good government and peace, prosperity, progress. Six years each under Cory, FVR, PNoy, DU30; two under Erap, 10 under GMA, and what have we to show? Economists will bring out their notes and compare GDP’s as a gauge of better or worse times, but following Senator Pacquiao’s reasoning, “after 1986 the poor multiplied.” Like another candidate, Ping Lacson, he blames corrupt government officials for the high incidence of poverty.
Meanwhile, fewer babies were born last year, but 2021 also registered the highest annual death rate (768,500) since 1942. Cold data of the Department of Finance tell us the number of poor increased from 22 million to 26 million during the pandemic, despite the heroic efforts of the Duterte administration to bring down the poverty incidence starting in 2019. What do you call that but bad luck? Digong has four months before leaving Malacañang, and whoever succeeds him will be struggling with a P12-trillion debt to pay. By Pacman’s accounting, “we have a P5.2 trillion budget and P2 trillion-something expected revenue” (mostly from taxes, ouch!).
Without doing the addition or subtraction, yet another presidentiable, Isko Moreno, views the problem from another perspective. The way he sees it, our problems stem from the “battle between two families” that has been dragging us along for decades.
In the middle of frustratingly political antagonisms, a pandemic, and now a maddening presidential election, we’re in the thick of a season of shortages as prices keep spiraling – water, power, sugar, flour, galunggong, chicken, pork, fuel. Why, there’s also a shortage of tall guys to razzle-dazzle on the basketball court and tall girls to pirouette on the ballet stage!