When I was still working in government many years ago, this was the time of year I would be involved in assessing what had just passed and looking ahead to the next year.
As a member of the private sector these days, I noticed how perspectives change when I sat on the other side of the fence. You see, when you are in government, there is a tendency to paint a bright picture, often highlighting the good points and deflecting, if not reducing, the bad points.
I learned that economic statistics can be interpreted so that the picture looks good even when it isn't. But I always believed that describing the situation truthfully is at the heart of good development planning. And that if not described accurately, problems may become more serious and difficult to resolve.
Perhaps it was my undergraduate schooling at the University of the Philippines (Diliman) during the turbulent 1970s, when President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law that enabled me to appreciate the need to describe the region's economic difficulties accurately.
Student activism was at its height then. Boycott of classes was common. The UP Student Council, composed of activist student leaders, hired buses to bring students to Plaza Miranda in Sta. Cruz Manila to attend rallies, where the slogans were: anti-Feudalism and Imperialism, even Fascism of the Marcos Administration. Those rallies and student activism contributed to the declaration of Martial Law on September 11, 1972.
Many students were killed in those years of heightened student activism. They sacrificed their lives, but was it worth it? There have been significant improvements in the incidence of poverty, but still millions are living below the poverty line. There is still so much to do fifty years after the 1970s.
Given that student activism is now back, with a major objective of fighting corruption, options have suddenly come to the forefront, many of which pertain to the type of government we should have. Should it be a military-civilian junta? Should there be a snap election? Should the President resign amid a corruption scandal affecting both the national and local levels to an extent unprecedented, or should we wait for the 2028 elections to elect officials willing to reform the system?
Will the release of some of the documents given by then Usec Catalina Cabral to Cong, Leandro Leviste alter the picture and the future? This document, if authentic, is devastating. Even those not in Congress receive allocations. Those who receive allocations get by the billions of pesos. That is not to say that the corrupted amount is also in the billions, but the cake is there for the taking. And many members of Congress are not saints or saintly. Many would be salivating.
The tangled web of corruption that President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., exposed led the public to a better understanding of corruption across many agencies, particularly in the implementation of infrastructure projects. After that, he has been hard-pressed, encouraging his key officials to support his crusade to the point of making essential announcements on social media himself.
The shock announcement and the subsequent actions have overwhelmed members of Congress, the billionaire contractors, and high officials in the Executive Branch. This exposé, led by a sitting President, has never occurred before and probably reflected in the number of resignations in the Cabinet and some Undersecretaries for reasons unknown to the public. It has supposedly even contributed to the death of an Undersecretary.
What could be the next major development in this campaign, now that a list of officials in both the Executive and Legislative branches of government who have worked on insertions and allocable funds has been released?
What is worrying is that people will accept the large allocation of infrastructure funds as usual and ultimately hope to receive a share of the benefits during the 2028 elections.
I stated in this column many months ago that the case buildup, filing of cases, arrests, trials, and decisions in the expected thousands of corruption cases will not be resolved until 2028. Given the slow pace of the cases, I now believe that it will take until the administration of the succeeding President. This will make the 2028 election very pivotal in the fortunes of those who committed corruption. Therefore, they will do their best to influence that election.
What road should be taken? Economists at the World Bank have reduced our economic growth prospects. In the meantime, our government continues to incur foreign debts. That is a double-whammy.
We have to fix this political and economic dilemma. Since we have a democratic form of government, we should make the 2028 elections the pivotal event that will enable us to fix this problem. I go for taking this road.
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