May 09, 2004

The Philippine STAR, Opinion Page

Mayday!

By Babe Romualdez

Tomorrow is an important day for this country.  Both literally and figuratively a "May Day."  During WWII, pilots who encountered emergencies would use "Mayday!" as a distress call.  The term, which was made official in 1948, is an anglicized version of the French phrase "venez m'aider," meaning "come help me."  

It is make or break for the present system to work.  Hopefully, it will be credible enough with the winner getting a clear majority.  It is either we land safely or we all crash.  Foreign and local analysts have said time and again that tomorrow's elections are crucial because this is going to be the last chance for this country to straighten up and fly right. 

The outcome of tomorrow's exercise will decide whether we are going to be a modernizing democratic state or a state of confusion for many years to come.  Whoever wins will have to be a skilled pilot who can weather enormous challenges or hazards.  The most pressing "Mayday " would be to raise revenues from taxes.  Having the lowest tax base in Asia, we cannot continue to live beyond our means.  We continue to have a huge deficit because we have a middle class that is rapidly dwindling.  

Soaking the rich and large corporations won't cut it.  This is not only counterproductive, but this will ultimately drive them away.  This is the real "Mayday."  The only way to solve this problem is to increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by at least 20 percent.  Last year, the GDP stood at 10.4 percent, the lowest so far in Asia.  Worse, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the government debt has now soared to $100 billion, or 120 percent of GDP.

The unemployment rate is another "Mayday."  There are 11 percent, or approximately 9 million people without jobs or underemployed.  In fact, going around Manila one morning on a weekday, a visiting nephew asked me why there are so many people hanging around the streets doing nothing.  One could probably surmise that they are part of the growing number of people who are jobless.  To be honest about it, generating one million jobs per year is still not enough for an 84-million population with an annual growth rate of 2.3 percent. 

We must come up with a stronger population management program and not allow a minority to dictate it.  It certainly won't be a picnic for the person who wins tomorrow.  Hard and unpopular decisions have to be made within the next six years.  That's for sure.  Some people even ask, "Who would want to be president of this country?"  Being president entails dealing with so many major problems.  And to top it all, one has to deal with too many clowns and know-it-alls in this country.

At this point in this nation's history, the consequences of another failed presidency brought on by polarized politics are going to be much more profound and far-reaching than at any other time.  This is mainly because we just have too many people now and the division between the A, B, C, D and E classes is so much greater than it ever was.  

Without a doubt, there can be no more people power.  We can no longer afford another one because it simply is not in the stars.  The next one will certainly be bloody.  Soothsayers have predicted that if we don't address the other factors that distress our society in this decade — the growing population, widespread poverty, pollution, the absence of law and order, the staggering budget deficit, the dwindling number of foreign investments — we will simply self-destruct.  The failure of the system for the past 18 years, which created polarized politics, must not and should not continue.

We do face a lot of "Maydays."  Another one is the imminent power crisis by 2007 that experts say will be worse than what hit us in the early 90s.  Luzon by 2008 will need additional power capacity while Mindanao faces an earlier power shortage by next year.  Then we have the foreign debt, a staggering $58-biHion as of December last year.  Interest payments alone take up 37 percent of the national budget, which is approximately P197.8-billion this year.

Our seven million OFWs, who are in reality our biggest "export product," have also sent out a "Mayday."  While their remittances have kept the economy afloat and the peso at manageable levels, we cannot depend on them forever.  They are still preferred by employers for their supposed facility in English.  However, the country might soon lose this slight edge if we don't address the mediocrity in our educational system.  Countries with English training programs have made our share of the overseas labor market smaller.  The competition is getting stronger and we have to cope with it.

Nonetheless, the next president has the unique opportunity to turn things around.  If GMA wins, hopefully she won't be beholden to anyone or to a particular group.  She will have the unique opportunity to be the only chief executive to have nine years and initiate far-reaching reforms no matter how unpopular.  The relationship with our number one ally, the United States, has never been better.  Of course, we don't know how George W. Bush will fare in the coming US elections, but definitely, four more years of the Bush Administration is going to be good for this country. 

The country has always benefited from the Republican Party because they believe in supporting allies and making them strong.  Democratic presidents usually harp on human rights and, more often than not, maintain an isolationist policy.  Sen. John Kerry's statement that the US shouldn't get involved in the world's problems is an indication of this ideology.  Needless to say, a Bush victory and a GMA victory would be good for the country.  As one US Embassy official told me, they are already regular "phone pals."

From the way Joe de Venecia and Frank Drilon sounded the other night where I was a guest panelist in Max Soliven's program on ANC Channel 21, it looks like an imminent GMA victory.  Frank said that a two million margin in favor of GMA is a fairly good mandate.  But we will never really know until a few days after tomorrow.  

All the candidates claim they are going to win by a comfortable margin.  Whatever it will be, tomorrow is Mayday for this country.  Mayday because we need a leader who will steer us through this perilous decade.  First and foremost, the next president must be able to unite this country and make people realize that we cannot continue to live the way we do.  Hopefully, too, we will have credible elections tomorrow for the democratic system to survive.  But no matter how many "Mayday" calls we make, if we have an "unskilled pilot" in the cockpit we will all ultimately crash and perish.

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