Polycrisis

The passengers frantically rearranging the furniture as the Titanic sinks. Such powerful imagery is apt for our situation.

In the end, it does not matter who presides over the Senate. It does not matter if the Vice President is convicted and banned from holding public office. Our institutions for governance are failing much faster than our politicians could contrive distractions from the fact.

The Philippines stares at the imminent possibility of a failed state. It is not a comforting view.

A few years ago, theorists devised the word “polycrisis” to describe a world engulfed by the dangerous entanglement of multiple global challenges. A “polycrisis” is “a unique period where multiple catastrophic, systemic threats overlap, interact and amplify one another.” The combined impact of converging threats is far greater than the sum of its parts.

The Philippine case represents a condensation of the “polycrisis” gripping the world. We face a dangerous convergence of external supply and price shocks, a highly vulnerable geography, a failing agriculture, strong geopolitical pressures, a stagnant domestic market, weak leadership and growing public disillusionment. We are teetering on the edge of the abyss.

Anyone who invested in our capital market a decade ago is now losing money. Nominal improvements in the value of their investment has been outstripped by inflation. Had they invested their money in any of our neighboring economies, they would be enjoying real profit.

Notwithstanding, our government is borrowing over a trillion pesos from the domestic market by issuing bonds despite higher interest rates. It is not doing so as a wise investor. It is doing so as a desperate borrower because we spend much more than we earn – and lose a horrendous amount of that borrowed money to plunderers.

Our finance officials boast about borrowing more in pesos than in foreign currencies, reducing vulnerability to foreign exchange risk. But borrowing locally also has the effect of crowding out private investments. The long-term effect is economic stagnation.

Meanwhile, our monetary authorities have raised policy rates to 4.75 percent, hoping to curb the inflation rate. This week, ANZ Research warned that monetary tightening will actually do more harm than good. It will slow our economic expansion further. The report cited the Philippines for having weak growth prospects and fragile external positions.

We have all heard about the net negative public appraisals of this administration’s performance. Nearly half of our people expressed dissatisfaction with the way our government is handling a challenged situation. This is a discouraging snapshot of our people’s assessment of the way the nation is governed. It is expected from a people so blatantly robbed by the irresponsible elite.

Alarmed by the survey results, government leaders have embarked on yet another round of rice dole-outs. In many documented cases, the 10-kilo plastic bags of rice contained infested grains. This will not strategically reverse growing public disenchantment.

Among the 11 ASEAN member-countries, the Philippines ranked 10th on public satisfaction with their government – only marginally ahead of cellar-dweller Myanmar, where the government is overtly at war with its own people. The Philippines posted a satisfaction rating of 32 percent, ahead of Myanmar’s 28 percent.

The comparative index was expectedly dominated by Singapore, where 75 percent of citizens were satisfied with their government. Surprisingly, Indonesia, with its own share of economic distress, was a close second at 74.5 percent. Indonesians are better satisfied with their government than patrimonial Brunei (70 percent) and late blooming East Timor (69 percent).

The administration’s dismal public satisfaction rating is a critical impairment. It is now bereft of political capital. It has little time left to launch anything significant. Public disillusionment has become a thick wall holding the political leadership captive. It is consigned to rearranging the furniture on the deck of a sinking ship.

Will the 2028 general elections free our country from the doldrums?

It is difficult to be optimistic about this. We have lost the institutions and instruments for decisive leadership. The political party system is a nepotistic fraud. It has no ability to breed the sort of statesmanship the country needs in the dire circumstances we find ourselves in.

We have lost the independent civil society movements capable of reimagining the nation’s future. Those masquerading as “progressives” have been captured in the web of oligarchic conspiracies. What remains of the political left allowed itself to be recruited into the self-serving effort to oust the Vice President. They do so in the hope of cornering elective posts in 2028 through alliances with the entrenched ruling elite – all the while cynically posturing as the “opposition.”

The business community has not mobilized to ensure 2028 becomes a means to realize a truly modernizing agenda for the country. Politically mobilizing for anything, we know, has become a perilous proposition.

Meanwhile, our agriculture withers away. No one dares speak in favor of reversing the breakup of farmland to make way for agro-industry. Land reform – which imposes a ceiling on farm productivity – is the last taboo. Instead of mounting a green revolution we so direly need, our policy has been to manage prices through wanton food importation.

No one dares to invest in our economy. Policy uncertainty and corruption make doing business here a penalty rather than a reward.

I wish I could be more hopeful about the country’s prospects given today’s predicament. But imagining a way through our irresponsible elite is itself a challenge.