EDITORIAL - Politics dashes any hope of reform

The reason why it is very difficult for the Philippines to rationalize and regulate things is that there is always an element of politics behind every move it takes in any direction. In cases where truly excellent ideas turn into policies and really practical intents are crafted into laws, it is always in the implementation and carrying out of orders that everything collapses.

Why? Because there are always political interests to protect. In the sense that laws and policies always naturally affect people and their various endeavors, it becomes an almost attendant consideration how votes can get affected by these laws and policies. Thus there are now in this country a surfeit of really good and beneficial laws that just lie and die there, unimplemented or, if implemented, only in a haphazard and inefficient way.

Take for example the ever growing problem of road congestion and traffic. One of the major contributing factors to the problem have nothing to do with traffic at all but with road congestion posed by people and their endeavors that are not supposed to hamper access and use of roads. But clearing roads cannot be done in a massive and consistent way without incurring the ire of a sector that is rich in votes.

And so, whatever measures get undertaken in this direction are usually just for show, for the consumption of media and the complaining others, meant to be forgotten until the next complaint comes along. Then there are the laws against driving motorcycles without helmets, or carrying very small children on motorcycles. These, too, do not get implemented as the laws on them intended. And for the same reasons – they could cost the politicians a lot of votes.

The same with the positive aspects of legislation and executive policy. Take, for instance, the preferential government attitude toward OFWs, often at the expense of local labor who contribute so much more to the economy than OFWs ever can. Why such bias for OFWs? Because they are, for all intents and purposes, a huge voting bloc. They are not like local labor whose vote is not collective and can go any which way.

And so on and so forth, this goes on unrequitedly. Policies and laws have become no more than charades intended to keep up the show. But in the truest sense, it is all just going through the motions. The worst part of it all is that every new policy and every new law never ceases to inspire hope in a people desperate for real change in their lives. Nowhere else is hope the mother of frustration than in this country.