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Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Gulle: How long do we have to wait?
By Inocentes A. Gulle
Your business is Our Business
SINCE the end of World War II, life in this country has started going bad compared to previous years.
Although it had never been really very good, life in general before the 1960s was tolerable as I have not seen anybody living in abject poverty.
I remember it started getting sour when they started tampering with our monetary system. Although I don't really understand the mysteries of finance, I could see enough to say that things were no longer the same after they declared the so-called floating rate, wherein from two to one, it would now take six pesos to make a dollar. From then on it would take more and more pesos to buy a dollar so it now takes 56 pesos and going.
Things went really very bad when they dumped Marcos and Ate Cory took over. Although the peso made a little comeback after it plunged to 50 to the dollar immediately after EDSA I (from 14 during Marcos' time), at 24 to the dollar during President Ramos' incumbency, it started sliding down to hell (P49 to $1) when Erap took over.
It didn't get any better, either, when Ate Glo EDSAized Erap, like Cory did to Ferdie. In fact, all signs say it's going to be much more badly in the coming days with oil prices rising like nobody's business.
We can only see two things that cause our present miserable existence. Oh, there are others but these would become insignificant if we can just overcome these two major ones--dirty politics and the rising cost of energy (oil).
As our power-hungry politicians, (wittingly or unwittingly?) egged on by even more power-hungry elements from the left, relentlessly harass the government, our economy would remain untended to. We the poor people will thus have to continue enduring this miserable existence.
Is there a way out for us little people that are caught in the slimy muck that ooze out of the political and ideological battleground so utterly bereft of moral, social and spiritual integrity?
I think the only way we can do away with it is to change this outmoded kind of government to a Parliamentary form. In such a system the Chief Executive can be changed any time the parliament feels he/she no longer meets what is expected of him/her. No more tedious impeachment process that would sap the energy of an incumbent government as is now obtaining.
It should be a Federal system too so that each member state can exercise its own kind of governance as dictated by its unique regional and/or ethnic requirements. With each state having the liberty to pursue its own development programs, without interference from overly centralized powers like we have, things would probably move faster.
For example the problem being energy, each state can try to find solutions to its power needs. Perhaps a state may financially and morally support a Daniel Dingle or a Carl Castillo that may happen to reside in that state, to perfect their research on hydrogen-fueled engines that they reportedly have stumbled on.
Or, maybe a state having an area suited for the purpose, may pursue a massive cassava or sugar cane projects from which to extract tons and tons of alcohol to fuel its energy generation like they are now proposing, to save on gasoline import.
Member states endowed with hydroelectric power may sell their surplus energy to their neighboring states, without the wolves from (central) government-owned or controlled corporation, manned by political lame ducks (Napocor?) helping themselves on the revenues earned.
Those are possibilities that can never be explored even if we like to, with the kind of dirty politics preoccupying the minds of our so-called leaders.
How long shall we have to endure these tiresome antics of these self-appointed champions of the mahihirap of our society? Isn't it about time we do something about it?
Maybe it would not be unseemly if we all write our representatives in congress to hurry up with the long overdue constitutional change.
(October 17, 2005 issue)
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