Ate Glue’s Clues

ANAHEIM, California – Any parent visiting children and grandchildren here end up babysitting, or at the very least, spend some time sitting down with a grandchild watching television together. Six months ago, my grandson loved watching a group of talking (and singing) vegetables in a series called Veggie Tales led by Bob the Tomato.

This time around, my grandson’s favorite is Blue’s Clues, an interesting show featuring Blue, a blue dog that leaves clues in the form of a blue paw print on objects that represent the next interesting thing for the children to do or experience. Blue’s clues are pretty ordinary, everyday things that are likely to be overlooked. And simply being imaginative is the secret to discovering the secret of Blue’s clues… give the ol’ brain a good exercise…

I couldn’t help wondering if perhaps, our country would be better off if Ate Glue had some version of Blue’s clues to exercise the brains of her officials, if any. The secret after all, is in using one’s imagination or the ability to see the potentials of the ordinary, to see the potentials beyond the ordinary.

Our problem with our leaders is the inclination to take the worn out path rather than think out of the box. They only become creative when it comes to lining their pockets with illicit wealth from the national coffers or more recently, as they tried to change the constitution. It would be great if Ate Glue had a program designed precisely to get her bureaucracy to be more creative in delivering public service... Ate Glue’s Clues.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. So I will have to use the concept of Ate Glue’s Clues merely as another way of reading the future under Ate Glue’s rule. From what I see today as we start the New Year, the future seems far from positive, despite the fact that 91 percent of adult Filipinos are entering the New Year with hope rather than fear, according to the final 2006 Social Weather Survey. I think hope has become a simple coping mechanism subconsciously designed to protect the typical Pinoy from going completely insane with his day-to-day problems.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but, the Pinoy’s state of denial notwithstanding, 2007 promises to be an even tougher and more frustrating year, based on what could be discerned from Ate Glue’s Clues. The economy will struggle hard to suppress the impact of our politics and try to move in step with the vibrancy in regional and even the world economy. But it would be a hard struggle and the cause could be lost as early as this month.

Charter Change, Joe de V style, is still very much alive. As we already know by now, Joe de V is not known to give up easily. Never say die, is more like it for Speaker Joe. It helps his cha cha cause that about two thirds of congressmen are "graduating" or banned from re-election by term limits. If you ever wondered why they were so bent on cha cha to the point of changing the lower chamber’s own rules in the dead of the night, self interest brought about by term limits is the reason why.

It’s now or never for Speaker Joe to be Prime Minister. It’s now or never for the rest of his bloody crew to preserve their legislative seats via a transitory provision that not only extends their terms, even grants them the right to call the next election. This late, PhilStar House reporter Jess Diaz reports that there are still moves to get cha cha in high gear as the New Year enters, complete with the proposal to postpone the May election.

If this happens quickly enough, political turmoil may once again cause the postponement of the once postponed ASEAN summit in Cebu. As it happened last month, they cannot allow the possibility of people power arising out of simple protest demonstrations in Manila while most of the security forces are in Cebu guarding the VIPs attending the summit. But because there is so little time left, if at all, and desperation from Joe de V’s camp is clear, an early attempt to revive cha cha is a distinct possibility.

The massive infrastructure program promised this year will have a difficult time getting off the ground again in 2007 because as we saw this year, government agencies are not ready to implement these projects. While these projects can generate jobs, government agencies are not geared to get projects started quickly enough to beat the pre-election ban. In any case, votes are more easily won because of favors granted to persons, as in direct dole outs. Long gestation projects whose benefits are more community than personal are good for economists but expect more camineros wearing Ate Glue T-shirts pretending to clean the streets.

Based on Ate Glue’s Clues, it would seem that Ate Glue’s crew would be more interested in big budget projects with big popular impact. That’s why Ate Glue is fighting tooth and nail for the retention of the school feeding program. Purely on its merits, I think the program would help a lot of our children and help them learn better if their brains had the proper nutrition. But I am sure its implementation in an election year will be no less scandalous than the JocJoc fertilizer program. It really is a pity.

As I explained last Friday, the P125 a day national minimum wage increase will cause a lot of disruptions in local business and industry, whether the law gets passed and signed into law or not. Unemployment will still be as bad as it had ever been and Ate Glue still has no clue on how to address it. For this reason, more Pinoys will seek jobs abroad. The new sectors creating domestic jobs in recent years, from BPO to call centers, will start to mature in terms of job generation in 2007, basically because we are running out of qualified personnel.

Health care will continue to be a major headache but at least, there are now stirrings of private sector activity to help in this area. The project of the Philippine College of Physicians to go on a nationwide Preventive Medicine information drive is a significant development that should help. But until the bill of Sen. Mar Roxas is passed and PITC given more budget to come out with a meaningful cheap prescription drugs program, the cost of prescription drugs will continue to be beyond the reach of ordinary Filipinos.

Over all, 2007 would be more of the same and worse. Do not expect the country to achieve economic take off any time soon. Nor is it wise to expect our politicians to behave themselves with honor and patriotism in 2007. It may even prove to be a literally bloody year as political killings can be expected to increase with the election season. The chilling effect of the deaths of journalists and broadcasters as well as the mass filing of libel charges by the powers-that-be will start to have an impact sooner than later.

It is good to hope for better things in the New Year but we mustn’t set our hopes unrealistically high or the disappointment could be devastating. And yes, it is not enough to just hope for a brighter tomorrow. We gave to act to make sure that happens.

Our lives won’t start to get better just out of sheer luck. If what is needed is nothing short of kicking the asses of our politicians to show them we have had enough, let us all do so when we vote this May. The Americans did it last year and I think it got the Republican establishment thinking about the error of their ways.

In the meantime, let us deal with the hangover from last night’s merry making as we drowned our sorrows and kept reality out of mind for a while. But now in the light of a new day in a new year, let us all make a resolution to do what we all can, in our own personal way to make things better not just for ourselves and our families but for our nation.

A Happy New Year to you all.

Mr. Lucky

Many of us desperately want to be lucky this year, buying round fruits, wearing red polka dot dresses and setting up a "lucky tree." Dr. Ernie E has this little story on the real meaning of how it is to be lucky.

A man walks into a bar and the bartender said "Hey John, how about a beer."

John replies "Yeah I’ll take one, but call me Lucky."

"Why call you Lucky?"

"Well, I was changing a flat tire on the highway, when I realized I had forgotten something in the car. Right after I walked away, a semi-truck drives by and knocked the car off the jack. It would have landed right on me."

"Boy you are lucky."

The next day John walks back into the bar and the bar- tender said, "Hey Lucky, how about a beer."

"Yeah I’ll take one, but call me Lucky Lucky."

"Now what happened?"

"Well, my wife and I were making love last night, when the guy downstairs got mad, because of the noise and shot his gun off. The bullet got me right in the nuts."

"Wait a minute, how is that lucky?"

"A minute earlier he would have shot me right between the eyes".

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]