"They can be summed up in six words."
"They can be summed up in six words."
The most significant events in the country in the year that ends today can be summed up in six words: Lockdown, recession, budget, ABS-CBN, Speakership and typhoons.
It would be the greatest understatement to say that the life of this country in 2020 was almost totally dominated by the greatest pandemic to afflict the world since 1918. The onset of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, forced the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte to place Metro Manila, Calabarzon and a number of other major population centers under a tough Enhanced Community Quarantine. With the operations of the transportation, non-essential manufacturing and service (especially tourism) industries brought to a halt, the Philippine economy went into a tailspin. Gross Domestic Product fell by close to 9 percent during the first quarter and by a much-sharper 16.3 percent in the second quarter. The third-quarter GDP contraction was smaller, and while the country was placed under a less stringent quarantine regime toward the end of the year, 2020’s final quarter is unlikely to see a return to a near-normal economy.
Swift and robust government action to ameliorate the plight of the job and business losers clearly was called for. The Duterte administration proposed, and Congress approved, legislation – two Bayanihan to Heal as One measures – to provide Social Amelioration Program funds for around 18 million needy families, small-business owners and transportation industry folk. The government’s fiscal response has been criticized on the ground of inadequacy; the leadership of the Department of Finance clearly appeared to have been more concerned with maintaining an acceptable debt-to-GDP ratio. At the end of 2020, the ratio stood at close to 58 percent – still a respectable figure.
Grave weather disturbances have always been a feature of this country’s existence, but with the growing intensity of global warming, really devastating typhoons have been visiting the Philippines with increasing frequency. Of the down-the-alphabet typhoons that hit the Philippines in 2020, two – “Rolly” and “Ulysses” – were particularly vicious. The 2020 typhoons delivered a double whammy to the nation: They destroyed infrastructure assets on which the government had spent billions of pesos and they caused the diversion of billions more from the budgets of government departments manning the COVID-19 frontlines. The pandemic, the recession and the typhoon – they make a powerful combination of adversaries this country has difficulty imagining.
Along the way, in 2020, the Filipino people’s attention was diverted from the nation’s grave problems by two distracting events. One was the battle for the Speakership of the House of Representatives between two individuals who had agreed to a term-sharing arrangement brokered by President Duterte. When the time came, in October, for him to honor his agreement with Lord Allan Velasco, Alan Peter Cayetano blatantly refused to step down, resorting to disingenuous political tactics. In the end, a humiliated Cayetano had to step down.
The other distraction also had the House of Representatives as its venue. That was the series of Lower House hearings on the franchise renewal of the nation’s largest broadcast network, 75-year-old ABS-CBN. Setting aside all the defensive explanations offered by the network’s legal team, the Lower House committee on franchises – not the full chamber, in plenary session – voted to deny ABS-CBN’s application. Mr. Duterte went to great lengths to deny any involvement in the matter, but how else could the administration-dominated Lower House act when the Chief Executive had repeatedly declared that there was no way he would allow ABS-CBN to obtain a renewal of its franchise? With ABS-CBN temporarily out of the picture, the remaining major broadcast network, GMA, has had to single-handedly support the government’s anti-coronavirus information effort.
Elsewhere in the world, the most important 2020 event was the defeat of Donald Trump in the November 3 US presidential election. The administration of President-elect Joe Biden will put an end to the Trump administration’s anti-internationalism and restore the US to the leadership of the free world.
A Philippines ravaged by global warming stands to benefit greatly from Mr. Biden’s intention to return America to the Paris Climate Accord.
The other top international event of 2020, apart from the economic lockdowns in all the major countries, was the continuing saga of the United Kingdom’s effort to obtain an acceptable post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union. After many extensions of the deadline, a trade deal was reached a few days ago. In recent times, it became increasingly clear that the UK was not negotiating from a position of strength. Time will tell whether the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson got a good deal for Britain’s economy.