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Friday, March 29, 2024

Poverty

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With the campaign period for national positions finally under way, the candidates are now free to square off openly. They have been shadow boxing in the sidelines for months. Now, they can go at each other to their hearts’  content. 

If we scan all their pronouncements, one constant favorite issue common to all is the issue on poverty. Every candidate is promising to be the one to be able to finally put an end to it. In fact, this is not the only election that poverty is a major election issue. Indeed, it has been the issue in national elections ever since I can remember. It is the favorite punching bag of every politician running for office. Yet, poverty in this country has remained very high. 

This is one big reason why I am skeptical whether we as a country will ever succeed in bringing down poverty in the near term. While other countries in the region were able to bring down poverty significantly, our poor has been stuck at about 25 percent of the population. The poor in this country have  always been the prop of every politician. If a president happens to come along and will be able to significantly reduce the poverty rate in this country, there is no doubt that he or she will go down in our history as the greatest president. 

As it is, the Filipino people have been condemned to a life of servitude to the interests of the less than one percent of the population who basically own the country to make them richer while the vast majority of Filipinos remain poor working for hand-to-mouth existence. Poverty is not impossible to reduce if only the nation can elect a president who is determined to eradicate the grinding poverty of many of our people whose numbers are growing every year due to population increase, about which the country cannot or refuses to do something. 

China for instance, was able to uproot half a billion people from poverty within a generation while we are unable to do anything with 25 million people. The comparison is revealing in that it reveals the quality and ability of our leaders. 

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In every national election, there is a rhetorical contest among the presidential candidates on who among them will do the most for the poor but without much success when elected. Former President Estrada, the most recent president so identified with the poor—in fact, a populist—was not able to do much. Electing an able leader who can put the interest of the people and country above his or her own is admittedly hard. There are after all very few of this kind of leader in our midst. 

Among our current crop of candidates, we have a populist in VP Binay, a technocrat in Mar Roxas, a sincere and compassionate person in Senator Poe, a local leader who would like to concentrate on our existential problems such as criminality and illegal drugs in Mayor Duterte, and a legal luminary in Senator Santiago but whose health is in question. 

One of them will be our next leader. Hopefully, he or she can resist the temptation that the position of president will provide for the sake of the country.

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This administration has never stopped reminding people that its economic achievements have been the best since the 1970s.  But even with this boost, it has hardly made a dent on the poverty rate in this country. If at all, it has gotten worse. If its battle cry is true that there would be no poverty if there is no corruption, then the poverty rate in this country clearly shows that corruption is alive and flourishing in this administration. 

Part of the reason that the administration candidate Mar Roxas is not going up in the polls is his insistence in continuing with the straight path program of the Aquino administration which the discerning public know very well to be a farce and a myth and people simply do not want a second term for President Aquino. Corruption is present in every country, even in countries that go around the world preaching against it. 

But the corruption that goes on in our country is truly mind-boggling. It is not only the amount that is being stolen but also the cavalier fashion and ease in the way that the money is stolen and distributed among the thieves in this government that is extraordinary. 

President Aquino has succeeded in projecting himself as the squeaky-clean president and it is for this reason alone, in spite of his incompetence, that his ratings have remained relatively good. But is he really that clean? I do not believe so. But where is the evidence of his corruption? 

Well, let’s be patient. Even a retired person like myself who is living far from the madding crowd, I do get information once in a while from people that I have worked and associated with while in government. This information tends to show that there are people in the Palace who have been lining their pockets with huge sums of money as their retirement fund. In due time, this, I was informed, will be exposed. 

Who are involved? What is the amount involved and how long has this been going on?

There is no reason for me to doubt the veracity of this information because as they say in intelligence, the source has the credibility and is in a position to know about this information. Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, this information will really be revealed so that these corrupt people who work in the Palace will be exposed for what they truly are.

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