Saturday, June 14, 2008 Editorial: When problem-solving is spelled 2010
AS THE economic situation continues to worsen and when just anyone who has to sell anything is jacking up prices, it leaves a very unsettling feeling when all you read in the newspapers is about a government that is giving out subsidies amid declarations, mostly insubstantial, of sustainable growth.
How can growth be sustainable when the solution to the power rate crisis in Metro Manila is a P500 subsidy for the poor, who had to line up in every Land Bank branch to get their share? How can growth be sustainable if the answer to the global rice crisis is long lines for government-subsidized rice and assurances of more imports? How can growth be sustained if government insists on pushing hi-breed rice seeds to farmers who can barely afford to pay the input required for such, and all that government can do is dangle a fertilizer subsidy that's good for only one sack? Drivers meanwhile save P1 for gas that they have been paying P20 less just three months ago.
Government even cracked up a name for it: Noah's Ark. And so you see hundreds of people lining up albeit more than two by two and you imagine them waiting for their turn to enter the ark, maybe for salvation but more likely to perdition. And all they will get is their rice for the day, or the P500 that will not last them long, anyway, to line up anew for another day. A nation of mendicants, a nation of desperate people, fed on a daily basis by a government that cannot see beyond the symptoms of the problem that it is now facing.
On the sides, the local representatives can only stall for time and extend the comprehensive agrarian reform program until December when the farmers are demanding a reformed reform program since the original has led them further into slavery.
The national administration is giving out money instead of real solutions. The local representatives are stalling for time. And the locals, while taking time out to wait in line for whatever subsidy there is, only see 2010 in their future. Because this is what all these is spelling out clearly to them. Change will come in 2010, or so the politicians will want to make us believe this early. If we ask them now, they cannot give us solid solutions to our problems. That doesn't mean they will not give winning yet another term in 2010 their best shot. But between the clamor of the people for real solutions, and the clamor of their stomachs for food today, the 2010 dreamers and racers would rather feed the stomach of the hungry mob and earn their patronage in the process. That's good enough until 2010, and then they will have another three years to hee and haw, and halt and stall while showering tidbits to tide them through yet another term.
If we allow this to happen to us again, and install the same people who can only offer promises and dole-outs, then let's not blame government for what they throw our way after 2010.
