IT is easy for a candidate for political office to run on a platform of moral good. Who can argue against a person “battling against corruption,” who wants to “help the lives of the poor,” or to “seek justice” in a cruel and unfair world?
The candidate does not even have to be specific about how all that is going to happen. It is almost enough just to want all those good things for the people and the nation. There seems to be the idea that if a righteous person says “stop corruption” or “stop poverty” enough times, it will happen like Moses parting the waters.
Likewise, it is easy for a voter to follow that idea since it requires no thinking if what the candidate is saying is feasible. And, when the goal is honorable and personally important enough, the “ends can justify the means.”
But in the real and practical world, it is hard to find money growing on the mango tree and even if it did, it still takes five years for the tree to bear fruit.
Maybe as we are being told, eliminating government corruption is the key to economic success, and it is hard to argue against that general idea. But the fact is that government corruption, even as large and serious problem that it is, is not the root cause of limited economic growth and performance even in the best of times. And this is certainly one of the worst economic times the Philippines has faced.
Unless Harry Potter—waving his magic wand—becomes president in May 2022, it is unlikely that corruption is going to stop dead in its track. Meanwhile, we have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of businesses that are no longer in operation because of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns.
There are those that think Filipinos are still stuck in the 1990s when votes came after candidates handed out two cans of sardines and a t-shirt. Politicians who believe that will lose as happened in 2016 and 2019.
We see the first critical economic issue in the tourism sector. We choose this because international tourism to the Philippines died in 2020. International arrivals in 2019 numbered 8.26 million. In 2020, that collapsed by 82 percent to 1.5 million.
International tourism is in large measure out of our control for the moment. However, we must take positive action to get those visitors back—through the Department of Tourism and the Department of Foreign Affairs. Maybe it would help to try to dispel the negative propaganda from some quarters that the Philippines is one large gulag of human rights atrocities and daily death squad activity.
We need the tourist “dollar” and the millions of jobs that come with it as quickly as possible. What is the specific plan?
It is time for hard work rather than more talk when it comes to mining. The easiest way to avoid doing something constructive is to endlessly talk about doing something constructive. Mineral resource extraction is not going to save the nation. However, this industry is like agriculture—what you “plant” today bears fruit in the future.
The person that should be elected president is the one who has a clearly defined policy roadmap with specific programs that will address the economic problems. This is not a time for feel good statements.
We must actively and specifically explore all roads and create a strategy to achieve economic prosperity. Any candidate that cannot do that and can’t articulate his or her plan to the people needs to step aside.