HOW quickly time passes by. The month of July is when graduation ceremonies take place. We witness parents gleefully celebrating the culmination of their children’s academic journey, especially those completing their college or graduate degrees and entering the job market with indefatigable hope. After years of struggling to complete their degrees, today’s graduates feel a sigh of relief and a sense of accomplishment. While parents await the time value of their children’s investment.
The World Bank has declared that the Philippines has graduated from a lower middle-income to upper-middle-income status based on its gross national income (GNI) per capita which increased to $4,850, above the $4,636 cut-off for upper-middle-income economies. Yet only a few economic analysts felt as happy as these graduates, as the uneven distribution of wealth in the country persists. Roughly one in six Filipinos still experiences abject poverty, while 41 percent of our 115 million population are almost near poor and vulnerable to fall below the poverty threshold. Indeed, while our Southeast Asian neighbors surged ahead and achieved upper-middle-income status as early as the 1990s, it took the Philippines nearly three decades to get to such status. And still only a minority of upper-income Filipinos are truly reaping from such economic gains.
The time value of national undertakings is not appreciated by many Filipinos. From one administration after another, the time it takes to reorganize and consolidate efforts has been wasted in political shifts and distractions. Unlike our neighbors, the Philippines has a revolving door of leaders, leaving many Filipinos in a quandary. The unstable governance delays program execution, and makes policies unreliable. In the long run, continuity is sacrificed for convenience and connivance. And the result is a time value higher in cost than our neighbors.
Sadly, it appears that the majority of Filipinos are willing to absorb the losses of wasted time while the nation diverts to uncharted paths and ignores previous initiatives. The political instability arising from the people’s protests over the flood control corruption scandals represents a classic example of an opportunity loss for the nation. Energies are exhausted unnecessarily on mass protests and rallies when prosecutorial and judicial offices ought to be functioning effectively to hold those public officials accountable. However, the erosion of public trust in these institutions compels many to peacefully assemble and seek redress for what they perceive as the government's lethargic and slow-footed response to corruption.
Time value is likewise lost on the country’s vast maritime resources — natural gas deposits, oil, marine energy and abundant fisheries — which could have been developed and utilized for national progress. China’s aggression in the West Philippine Sea has deterred us from taking advantage of these resources. The millions of jobless and underemployed are not being optimized for their productivity and their fullest economic potential is untapped. And the inability to improve the ease of doing business has likewise discouraged foreign investors from off-shoring their businesses, while poor transport and infrastructure systems continue to sap the enthusiasm of foreign tourists to visit the country.
All these wasted “what-ifs” have dragged down the country for decades. Yet the majority of Filipinos seemed to accept, and even embrace, the rut they find themselves in. Call it Filipinos’ penchant for romanticizing resilience or perhaps, the absence of moral courage to confront the need for national renewal — the unwillingness to change minds and behavior on lost time even though the solutions are staring us in the face.
Time value is lost in our national pursuits. I surmise the reason behind this is our Pacific Islander culture. It is deeply embedded in our national character — a tendency to sit back, relax idly, and wait on the beach as the clock ticks and passes by. As the world around us has changed dramatically, we pat ourselves on the back because the country has reached its much coveted upper-middle-income status.
But what a lot of time wasted for us to get there, and yet the nation is still poor. Tragically, we are still wasting time to make the nation genuinely inclusive, equitable, human-centered and sustainable as we embark on another period of political uncertainty.
