The bigger problems

“In the larger scheme of things, Sara is unimportant. So please do not file impeachment complaints. It will only distract us from the work of governance which is to improve the lot of all Filipinos.”

That was BBM’s message to his congressional supporters, which circulated on social media late last week. BBM eventually said he sent it as a private message which was leaked. It is a good message and an indicator of how BBM is getting better at his job.

Indeed, from the perspective of BBM, there is nothing more to be gained by raising the decibels of discord with the Dutertes. The brat had been shooting her mouth off that shows her to be unbecoming of the high position she holds and unworthy of being a successor to the presidency. Her fishmonger style of verbal combat only got her deeper into trouble and the DOJ and NBI must pick up from there.

On a practical level, an impeachment case will distract everyone and may not even manage to get the 16 votes in the Senate needed for conviction. So, why bother? Timing is essential. Maybe after the May 2025 elections. Make sure BBM and allies elect more senators first.

The bigger problem of BBM now is, as his message puts it, good governance to improve the lives of Filipinos. The big issue the Dutertes have been harping upon now is the worsening corruption under BBM’s watch. Indeed, it is a growing menace that keeps our economy from really progressing like our neighbors.

BBM should do something about corruption like the increasing commissions of congressmen on pork projects which was exposed by Baguio Mayor Benjie Magalong. But I doubt BBM would or could stop/moderate the greed of politicians in his alliance.  He needs all the political support he can get now that the Dutertes are sniping at him and trying to get the armed services to withdraw their support from him.

Former NEDA Secretary Ciel Habito wrote in his column last week that the people are losing hope on corruption. “Ask anyone around, and they’re likely to agree that corruption is now more widespread, glaring and large-scale that people seem to have become almost desensitized to it… We get a sinking feeling that things have gotten out of hand, and nothing any of us can do can stop it.”

Talk to business entrepreneurs, especially the small business owners who run their own operations and many are almost ready to give up. One was telling me how a fire inspector from the Bureau of Fire Protection had been trying to shake down their business. They force them to buy fire extinguishers from their suppliers at inflated prices and are now even requiring them to put up fire protection systems worth millions of pesos or they won’t get a fire clearance needed to get business permit renewals. These fire inspectors are not under the supervision of LGUs but of a bureau under the DILG.

Maybe, BBM can start his anti-corruption drive at the lowest level in the executive branch. He can ask DILG and BFP to clean up their act and really punish a few (ma-sampolan) to drive a point about being serious. Of course, the big fishes are congressmen and senators and their pork barrel funds. Sooner or later, BBM will have to ask the Speaker and the Senate President to help him moderate the greed of our legislators.

BBM should take with a grain of salt the claims of his economic managers that our economy is doing great. Not even the S&P’s positive credit rating upgrade really means anything to alter the reality ordinary people feel. BBM should take a lesson from what happened in the US. The economy, according to the macroeconomic numbers and a cabal of Nobel Prize winning economists, is doing great. But common folks struggling from paycheck to paycheck to pay rent, utilities and grocery bills expressed their grievances by voting Trump.

The numbers that best describe what real people experience are reflected not so much by figures NEDA loves to cite but by the SWS self-rated poverty survey. In the third quarter of 2022, SWS reported that 49 percent or 12.2 million Filipino families believed they were poor. Two years later or October 2024, this figure rose by 10 percentage points to 59 percent or 16.3 million families.  About four million more Filipino families feel poor since BBM assumed office in 2022.

The survey also found 46 percent of families rating themselves as Food-Poor, 17 percent rating themselves as Food Borderline.  Hunger rate, especially one related to rice inflation, is a dangerous political number.

There are other indicators that belie claims of government economists that the economy is doing well. For instance, the country’s external debt ratio — measuring the proportion of economic output or gross domestic product needed to repay external debt — stood at 28.9 percent as of June 2024, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. This marks an increase from previous years, indicating that a larger share of export income (which is declining) is being used to service debt.

As of June 2024, BSP also recorded a 10.4-percent increase in the country’s external debt at $130.182 billion (P7.650 trillion), composed of public and private debt. In June 2023, the external debt was at $117.918 billion (P6.929 trillion). The sad part is, we are borrowing to fund congressional pork projects that feed corruption on a grand scale. Our grandchildren will have to pay the cost of this looting of the Treasury.

The Philippines’ current account deficit (-3.2 percent) and national government deficit (-5.1 percent) are still worse than before the COVID-19 pandemic. This shows the country has been importing more goods than it is exporting and that the government is spending more than it is earning.

BBM is right. In the grand scheme of things, the brat from Davao is unimportant.

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