“We should stop gawking with a mixture of delight and envy at those insensitive rich souls who flaunt their wealth.”
This will be our last article for the year, so we decided to write about some of the things that we would wish for the coming new year.
We take off from what Pope Francis said in his Christmas message, where he focused attention on “the problem of our humanity—the indifference produced by the greedy rush to possess and consume.”
If we decry the fact that our sovereign debt is now P13.54 trillion and counting, we should also look at the microeconomic side of our consumerist culture, inherited likely from our American colonialists and reinforced through the years by our aping American ways which has given rise to the descriptive—“little brown Americans.”
Our GDP relies heavily on consumption, and since most of what we consume, including food, is imported, our balance of trade is always on the negative side, as we export little else than bananas, coconut derivatives, and little value-added electronic and appliance assemblies.
And we rely on our OFWs to bring in the foreign exchange that makes it possible to finance our imports and sustain the same consumerism of their dependents.
Since 2023 will be a continuation of the difficulties we experienced this year, likely worse, we should mend our consumerist ways and try, despite inflation, to save more.
For starters, we should stop gawking with a mixture of delight and envy at those insensitive rich souls who flaunt their wealth.
We should un-subscribe to YouTube videos and Instagram accounts of “crazy rich” Filipinos, who boast of their collection of signature handbags, their $10,000 dinner sets, their luxurious mansions and opulent lifestyles, in the midst of so much poverty where the urban poor eat “pag-pag” and the rural poor subsist on “balinghoy” or cassava laced with kidney-damaging “bagoong.”
Conservative estimates tell us that some 12 percent of our population are suffering from hunger and malnutrition, and despite the 4Ps, it is a lingering problem with dire effects on the future of our young.
One of the best things that FM Sr. did at the beginning of martial law was to ban “society” sections in our newspapers after print media resumed.
Of course, his first lady flaunted her extravagance which, among others, led to their downfall.
Though Cory Aquino showed grace and simplicity, many others in government and the private sector revived the show-off culture.
Social media made it worse, as social climbers and plain show-offs found a convenient vehicle to parade their tasteless lifestyles.
So the first in my wish list for 2023: let’s all put an end to flaunting our wealth, and be sensitive to the poor who hardly eat two square meals a day.
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Let me focus on tourism first in this wish list, as it remains a potential savior of our ailing economy.
NAIA is considered one of the world’s worst airports by almost every international travel observer.
Though there have been very sensible improvements of late, like removing those redundant X-ray checks as we enter the airport, or doing away with the senselessly tedious One-Health pass for arriving passengers, a lot more needs to be done.
We commend the current NAIA management for making life less miserable for both arriving and departing passengers, and we hope they would continue their good work in 2023, while we await the completion of both Bulacan and Sangley as international gateways.
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Last Monday, we read about Sec. Frasco’s assurance to Duty Free Philippines employees who would have been “right-sized” off their jobs in 2023, per recommendation of the GCG. In the spirit of Christmas, perhaps.
My wish is for the DOT to privatize Duty Free Philippines in 2023.
Government can never be good at business, particularly in retail. It’s byzantine control, purchasing and audit procedures leave no room for sensible business management.
The losses of DFP during the pandemic years will not considerably improve, and, in fact, if we examine its finances from the time it was put up as a government entity, it isn’t worth its supposed reason for being.
Private capital can modernize it, particularly the choice of merchandise it offers, and manage it well. Government cannot, no matter who they appoint to head it.
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Despite the president’s veto of the congressional injunction in the 2023 budget against spending massively on changing the marketing slogan “It’s more fun in the Philippines,” we agree with Senate tourism committee chair Nancy Binay’s admonition that we continue using that slogan.
We keep changing our tourism slogans with every change in DOT leadership, and, most of the time, they have been either sloppily produced and thus failures, at times even ridiculed.
The late “Sunshine” Joe Aspiras won plaudits and got more visitor arrivals with his famous line “The Philippines: Where Asia wears a Smile” at a time when there was yet no “smiley” logo and when Filipinos were indeed the most hospitable and gracious hosts to foreign visitors.
“It’s more fun in the Philippines” rekindles that product differentiation vis-à-vis our competitors in Southeast Asia, with the probable exception of Thailand.
Build on it, rather than change it. And adapt our campaigns to the market. It’s not all sun and sea that attracts foreign visitors.
“Amazing Thailand” and “Malaysia, truly Asia” have been running continuously and the success shows in the number of visitor arrivals.
The Tourism Promotions Board and the DOT should instead spend more on advertising, and replace those lethargic tourism attaches we have assigned to major visitor capitals, with in-country sales agents who get a commission for every tourist they produce.
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With our traffic situation not expected to considerably improve within the next several years, and our sidewalks very pedestrian and biker unfriendly, let’s think of a less expensive and faster solution.
In Taiwan, sidewalk rules are strictly followed. There are properly marked pedestrian and biking paths in sidewalks that are at least three meters wide in their main thoroughfares.
In Metro Manila, easements for sidewalks are not followed, hence, bikers have to compete with motorcycles, cars and buses for use of our roads.
It should be rather easy and relatively inexpensive to construct a roofed, overhead walkway cum bike lane along the entire EDSA route. Intersections with ramp access can be placed in more or less 500 meter intervals.
We can expect loud objections from the residents of EDSA-peripheral mansions in Forbes, Dasmarinas, San Lorenzo, Bel-Air, Corinthian over their “security” but never mind them.
They can wall themselves in raised concrete fences, and the overpass need not be too high.
A person going to Buendia from Ayala Avenue or Pasay Road can walk instead of taking a cab or bus. So can a biker use the same overpass from Cubao to Makati safely on a dedicated lane.
The pressure on our decrepit public transport system can be relieved considerably; people can economize with convenience, and we encourage walking and biking which are good for the health.
Manila and Pasay can do the same in Roxas Boulevard, using the service road on its eastern side for the purpose. The walkway also provides a roof for underneath parking.
Since the load bearing capacity is low compared to motor vehicle passageways, these can be finished quickly and inexpensively.
Maybe Sec. Jimmy Bautista can find this suggestion worth his while.
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We will begin our New Year columns on January 2 with similar wish lists containing this writer’s “So I See” suggestions for both government and the private sector to consider, all in the spirit of unity and a positive outlook.
Happy New Year to all!