The here and now

The angry crowd rushing through the presidential palace in Sri Lanka must have evoked a sense of deja vu to our new President. Like what happened here that forced him and his family into exile, it was a preventable event if the leadership managed the country right.

Washington Post reports: “The president’s departure is likely to disrupt the Rajapaksa family dynasty that dominated the country’s politics for decades and ultimately helped drive one of South Asia’s most prosperous nations to economic collapse and finally to uprising…

“Rajapaksa’s imminent departure… the scenes from Saturday attest to a hardened public sentiment against the family, which is also facing allegations of corruption and amassing wealth.”

A country doesn’t get bankrupt overnight. The Sri Lankan government has been described as “astonishingly irresponsible and incompetent” at managing the country’s economic policy after the Rajapaksas took office in 2019.

We are hopefully nowhere near Sri Lanka’s crisis situation. But our national leadership doesn’t have the luxury of time nor a generous margin for error to deal with our current challenges.

Our economic managers say they are not losing sleep over our depreciating peso, our government’s debt level or our government’s ability to finance its operations. I hope they are right and I respect them enough to believe that they are probably right. But what if they are wrong?

It is so difficult to predict what’s going on in the world today. We simply have to be ready for the next black swan event.

So far, our newbie President seems to be diligently processing everything he is being told. It helps that he chose respected economic advisers. Hopefully, he will not have a midnight Cabinet like Erap’s, with vested interests.

Still, it should start to bother the President that he is getting a lot of advice on the economy that is probably good for the long term. But what does he do for the here and now?

Food security is a good example. It is politically good to say we will grow our own food, we will aim for food self-sufficiency. But what will our people eat today?

There are those who want him to dump the Rice Tariffication Law now. His Finance Secretary is telling him to stay the course. Both advice have long term implications. But what is the right thing to do now?

The President is right to backtrack on the P21/kilo rice and clarify that it is only an aspiration. How do we get there?

In the meantime, the UN FAO food price index shows international rice prices creeping up for the fifth straight month to reach a 12-month high. How can the government make sure the price of rice remains stable? How do we satisfy the rice consumers and at the same time not impoverish the rice farmers?

Then there is inflation. Inflation is just another way of talking about rising consumer prices. Instead of casting doubt on the inflation rate determined by the PSA, Junior should have talked about his plans to tame prices of prime commodities and services.

He is right to say part of that increasing inflation rate is imported, as in petroleum product prices. True, we can only follow world market prices for gasoline, diesel, and LPG. But he has powers to mitigate the impact of rising oil prices through direct assistance to public utility drivers. Or cut oil taxes.

Urban consumers are complaining about the increasing cost of vegetables and meat. Yet, we keep on seeing pictures of tomatoes and other vegetables being dumped by farmers on highways for lack of buyers.

An immediate program to help farmers bring their produce to urban markets is needed. It had been done before, but sporadically. Instead, we are hearing proposals to put up tomato processing plants that are expensive, take time, and end up as white elephants.

In transportation, the crisis being felt by urban commuters will be alleviated in five years by the current rail infrastructure being built. But what do we do in the here and now?

For EDSA commuters, expanding the capacity of MRT3 is a no-brainer. The rehab work by Sumitomo has been completed. It is time to put as many of the Chinese-made Dalian trains to work.

Additionally, that bus carousel program should be made to work as designed. Commuters are not asking for libreng sakay. They just want to have a dependable system to get to work and go home at the day’s end. Those long lines during rush hours cause public anger to rise.

While DOTr is still figuring out how to provide dependable mass transportation in urban centers, the government shouldn’t be too eager to dump work-from-home arrangements. Aside from helping workers save on commute time, they can also save on transport costs in this era of rising gasoline/diesel prices.

In education, the new administration should be more determined in instituting face-to-face classes. The education of our children has suffered severely due to the inadequacy of DepEd’s online learning attempt.

If there are not enough classrooms that can be safely used in a pandemic, use excess classrooms of the private schools that have scaled down. Or, use vouchers to let public school students attend private schools.

We should not be distracted by calls to revise the K-12 curriculum when it is obvious the fault lies in implementation. Test results are telling us the problem is  the inability to properly teach math, reading, and science. Stick to basics for now and we can deal with long term goals, like instituting military training, when things get more normal.

Government planners and experts after a consultancy contract will offer President Junior nice sounding long-term plans. In all likelihood, we already have volumes of long term plans gathering dust in some bureaucrat’s drawer.

Let us focus on the immediately doable plans for the here and now. We must deal with any budding crisis before public patience runs out.

I am sure what is happening in Sri Lanka is Junior’s worst nightmare. He has been there before. Addressing the here and now prevents a repeat.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco