Page 141 - kpiebook63002
P. 141
²££°¸¡§´²²£
ª²±£°À¥i² £±ÉµÈ 141
¤±³µÃ£Ã£ j³¨£i³¿¸Ç®³¤²³
The Philippines has been unable to dramatically uplift a large segment of the
population from poverty, vulnerability, marginality, and lack of voice that I think while
we have been a democracy, the ability of the Philippines to come up with the
decisions that are good has not been there. So, we need to make our legislature
do its work. The problem with our legislature is that it’s full of political dynasty
members. It’s been captured by the elites. Therefore, they would not want to…
We’re having a hard time making it pass. They required… lots that are required to
improve the life of Filipinos.
The social media brings images of progress and prosperity to the base of the
pyramid trapping them in hopelessness and resentment. In other words, you have a
lot of Filipinos going out there to almost all contests in the world. They’ve all the
values. They get the images of progress. And so, you will see that all the values are
the most resentful of what is happening in the Philippines. They are also among
the most active in social media supporting President Duterte because they think that
he will be able to dramatically change society.
So, the decisional efficiency and legitimacy of government must be fair to the
individual citizen level. This is where we are failing, I think while we talk about
progress of the national level and city level, but the individual level, Filipinos have not
improved their lives. If we look at government, the bureaucracy as a whole has been
very poor in converting inputs, taxes, the effort of people into outcomes. And if you
look at the performance management of government, it’s basically all trying to get the
right inputs together, but eventually they are not able to convert it into poverty
programs, health programs, roads and bridges, and so on. So I think that’s a problem.
There’s also illusive justice especially now we have a lot of extrajudicial killings,
and this allocation by the presidential drive to solve the crime and drug problem.
Keep promise to do this in three to six months. It’s been two and a half years. And
actually now we are seeing massive smuggling of drugs into the country. Apparently,
the supply has increased. So, the capacity of the government to solve this has been
reduced, yet the extrajudicial killings are happening. The price of Cebu in Manila,
according to our anti-drug, shah has gunned down because there is such a huge
supply of drugs because of the smuggling that has happened over the past several
weeks.
Another problem in democracy that we are facing now is that people participate
in politics without proper mobilization and consolidation. I mean you have a lot of
people who have not participated in politics for a long time. Then, suddenly you have
the social media, they have the capacity to receive public opinion and accept, and
advocate that opinion. People are doing that with a vengeance and it has deeply
polarized. The term that was used this morning, deeply polarized. It’s exactly what
has happened in the Philippines.
I cannot discuss all of these things because I don’t have the time. But ª£¸²£ª±¡¡²¥¸h¡¢h¢µÈ
hopefully you might want to follow this up later in the open floor room.
