IN football — the American kind — there is this trope among coaches to gather together their teams at the end of the third quarter (the game is divided into four quarters of 15 minutes each), and declare, “okay, it’s a brandnew ball game. 15 minutes to go, let’s win this.” The coaches who say this the most often are the ones whose teams have gotten absolutely shellacked for 45 minutes, and are down by a double-digit number of points, or those whose teams are only a point or two ahead or behind their opponents.
I only have perhaps a half-dozen friends here in the Philippines that would understand the metaphor, but I’m going to go with it anyway, because it’s illustrative. If the Philippines was a football team, it would be starting the fourth quarter losing the game badly, with no real prospects of pulling out a miracle win. We have a quarterback (the president) who has individually been playing a reasonably competent game, but whose receivers and running backs (the DPWH, Department of Transportation, Bureau of Customs, DILG) couldn’t hold onto the ball if it was coated in glue, and a nose tackle (the defense secretary) who’s going to have to change his name to “unsportsmanlike conduct” for the number of penalty flags he’s incurring for picking fights with the other team. The kicker (the ombudsman) has turned into Captain Hook, and has shanked every field goal he’s attempted. And the offensive line (the Department of Energy and the NFA), except for one guard (the ERC) is playing worse than the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Steelers won this week, but come on, it was against Cincinnati. I could form a team consisting of myself, my mother, and my cat who is recovering from a respiratory infection and probably beat the Bengals.
The point is, the Philippines came into the game represented by the year 2026 with a decent game plan that should have guaranteed a safe, unremarkable win; not one for the history books, but one marked by respectable growth; progress, if not a complete solution, in cleaning up corruption and improving government processes; further reductions in poverty; getting some long-delayed infrastructure developments back on track; and improving trade, exchange and overall relations with other countries, particularly within our own region.
As the old saying from the world of military strategy goes (and it is a favorite aphorism of many football coaches), the best plan rarely survives first contact with the enemy, and that has been the case for the Philippines through the first three quarters of this year. Indeed, some of the challenges faced by the country are entirely beyond its control, such as the US dictator’s Very Stupid War in the Persian Gulf, and the onset of what looks to be a record-breaking El Niño. Not only has the country not responded well to those issues, it has failed miserably in “playing around its deficiencies.” This is a concept that good coaches teach their teams, and I suppose it is common to many sports. If you already know that you are not faster or stronger than your opponent, you follow a game plan that does not force you to compete on speed or strength, but rather what you are best at; you may not be stronger, but have greater endurance, and you may not be faster, but have greater agility.
The Philippine government, and to a great extent, the business sector as well, has played this year as if it has been a normal year that has only been affected by some temporary glitches. The war will be over soon, the effects from El Niño will pass within a few weeks, or perhaps a couple of months at most, therefore only short-term reactions to those things are necessary.
And what has resulted from that? The economy has taken a distinct downturn, and every credible forecast is that it will get much worse through the last part of this year. Inflation remains elevated, and all the risks to that are to the upside well into next year. The energy crisis brought on initially by the spike in prices caused by the war in the Middle East has been exposed as a result of a foundational deficit in generation resources. The distraction of the impeachment of the vice president will have no positive result, except in the minds of those who feel that legislative endorsement of the massive embezzlement of public funds and overall boorish behavior on the part of high officials is a good thing. The “anti-corruption” drive otherwise has been completely hamstrung by the ease by which those accused have been able to avoid accountability; sure, a couple of alleged miscreants are in custody, but I would not bet real money that they will stay there.
If the Philippines falls into the fourth quarter of the year relying on the playbook it has followed for the first three quarters, it is going to lose badly. It is time to take some risks, to use those plays that are in the back few pages of the playbook and that might be practiced once a week, but not seriously considered for a game situation unless things get desperate. I have some suggestions:
First, the most important thing is to get prices under control, because these are affecting everyone on a day-to-day basis, and could throw many people back into poverty. The six-whatever percent inflation rate we are told exists now does not accurately reflect what households are contending with in their weekly grocery bills, costs of commuting to work or school, costs for basic utilities, or costs for remaining healthy.
Second, the Philippines needs to back off its contrived conflict with China. Sending Gibo Teodoro in front of news cameras to be a mouthy and insulting provocateur is not the way to deal with China. That is not to say that China’s perspective is at all correct, and I do not believe that it is, but the “Western” way of dealing with the conflict will never work. And attempting to do so in that manner is simply going to introduce problems the country does not need right now.
Third, there should be plans in place, and ideally already under implementation, to address the “worst case scenario” of the El Niño, because it is now virtually inevitable that is what the country will face. According to data shared by Asian Development Bank (ADB) in a briefing last week, the ocean temperature differential is already at about 2.9 degrees Celsius, and increasing; the strongest El Niño on record was about 3.5 ̊ C, and this one still has two to three months before it will peak. This means, on the one hand, preparing for prolonged and extreme drought conditions across the entire country; and on the other, having response plans in place for severe typhoons, because even though fewer will affect the country directly, the ones that do will be extraordinarily strong.
Another somewhat clichéd principle in coaching is that, even if victory is out of reach, the team can hold its head up by doing its best, and making sure that the other team’s win is a result of having been beaten, rather than losing. That may be where the Philippines is at now, but it is still better than the alternative.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Bluesky: @benkritz.bsky.social
Website: www.badmannersgunclub.com
