“What’s To Be Done”
by Jose Cortez
Crisis after crisis has characterized the first one hundred days of the administration.
One, the cost of living crisis. A family of five can no longer live decently with present minimum wages.
More so agricultural workers, both plantation be and non-plantation workers whose take home incomes are below the floor wages.
Look at the figures from private surveys and government data that show surges in unemployment and underemployment, the inflation rate, the energy shortages, food shortages and housing shortage.
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High unemployment and underemployment are indicators of a weak economy.
It means the underutilization of labor power , which translates to low incomes, widespread hunger, lower gross domestic production.
Given the longest lockdown due to the pandemic, slow snail-paced recovery and corruption in the misallocation and malversation of government funds, if not outright thievery, the malady we have could still worsen.
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The last six years have seen the patience and resilience of the Filipino.
We have survived , no thanks to the government leaders.
We are looking forward to the next six years with eyes wide open and the hope that the corruption we witnessed in the past half century will not be exacerbated by misplaced loyalties, incompetence and greed of those in power, albeit , with questionable legitimacy and popular trust.
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Elsewhere: The new Prime Minister of UK, Rishi Sunak is an Indian multimillionaire, erstwhile Minister of the Exchequer, under Boris Johnson.
See how the screw turns, from colonial slaves to the highest civilian office of the colonialist nation.
Nothing to cheer about, really, Rishi is a Conservative Party leader, a whiz kid of the financial imperialists.
Meanwhile, Russia is losing the war against UKraine, and a people’s insurgency is palpable in Moscow streets, and in other major cities of Russia while the country’s borders are now within gunsight of AFU and US-NATO armies watching and waiting for another cataclysmic and erratic move by the autocrat, Vladimir Putin.
Let’s keep on watching the developments.
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(About the writer): Jose Cortez has been a political journalist for 50 years, writer, and editor. In pre-Martial Law days, he wrote for Manila Times, and post-Martial Law for Philippine Graphic and Metro Sun.
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