Kakistocracy, kleptocracy

My Feb. 1, 2025 Saturday column, “Gutom Na, Tanga Pa,” has gone viral.

Of more than 250 reactions, 99 percent were angry, at the state of things – food in severe shortage and high in cost, and the exceedingly poor quality of public education.

Kids are malnourished and hungry. As if that is not enough aggravation, they are not being educated at all by the public school system. Kids reach Grade 4 without learning anything at all. They reach age 15, high school, without knowing how to read, how to write, how to count beyond 20. They do not know any science. Talagang gutom na, tanga pa (Hungry and stupid). It’s a formula for a revolution.

In 2024, agricultural production (Agriculture, Fishery and Forestry, AFF) fell 1.6 percent. In 2023, AFF grew a paltry 1.2 percent. Ideally, to meet barely adequately the food needs of Filipinos, agricultural production should grow five percent per year. In the last four years (2020-2024), agriculture output was down in seven of 16 quarters; growth in the nine positive quarters was 2.2 percent or less.

Since the population is growing at 1.8 percent or two million Filipinos per year, at the very least agriculture should grow by 1.8 percent per year, to feed the additional two million born each year.

A 1.6 percent AFF growth in 2023 meant 222,000 mouths could not be fed. A 1.8 percent decline in agriculture in 2024 means two million plus two million mouths plus 220,000 had no food last year. That’s 4.22 million Filipinos who had no food at all in the past two years alone. And that’s on top of a quarter of 120 million Filipinos, or 30 million, who already have no food to eat or barely have enough food to eat.

The Social Weather Stations in December 2024 found 25.9 percent of Filipino families who said they suffered involuntary hunger – being hungry and not having anything to eat. There are 26 million families. So 25.9 percent of that is 6.9 million families. Each family has 4.5 members. So 6.9 million families mean 31 million Filipinos.

Nothing to eat or food poverty is the worst form of poverty. It is the fate of 31 million Filipinos. Without food, a man dies in three weeks.

Despite being incompetent and unable to provide food for at least 31 million Filipinos, our political dynasties prosper year after year, in predictable perpetuity. Alive and kicking, the political dynasties control 80 percent of Congress seats, the 82 provinces, 1,493 towns and 149 cities.

Why is there no outrage at such deplorable state of things? Simple answer: our people are stupid. They have no sense of outrage. They are barely aware that they are being screwed by the very politicians they elected to serve them. These politicians steal up to half of the P6-trillion-plus annual budget. Three trillion pesos are plundered each year.

EdCom II (Second Congressional Commission on Education) says only 25 percent of Filipino children meet the recommended energy intake between ages 6-12 months, with particularly low rates among those from impoverished households.

EdCom II cites a landmark PIDS study finding that Filipino children aged 3-5 had a diet that relied mainly on carbohydrates while consuming 20 percent less protein, 40 percent less fat and 35 percent less carbohydrates than recommended. Notably, children from the bottom 40 percent quintile consumed significantly less protein, a nutrient critical for growth and stunting prevention.

In high school, up to 98 percent of teachers are incompetent. They should not be teaching their subjects at all because they do not know those subjects.

“Sixty-two percent of high school teachers teach subjects outside their college major,” says EdCom II.

“This misalignment between pre-service training and school-level needs undermines the quality of instructional expertise in the basic education system. Compounding this issue, 62 percent of high school teachers who are expected to specialize teach subjects outside their college major. The problem is particularly pronounced in the sciences, with a 98 percent mismatch in the physical sciences and an 80 percent mismatch in the biological sciences, highlighting a critical gap in subject-specific expertise. This lack of knowledge extends to Key Stages 1 and 2, where 13 percent and 16 percent of science teachers, respectively, teach science outside their specialization.

“The teacher education curriculum requires only a minimum of six units each for field studies and practice teaching, which is among the shortest practice teaching requirements in the world.

“Evidently, this impacts teacher preparation quality and necessitates stronger specialized training by DepEd, through the National Educators’ Academy of the Philippines (NEAP).”

In Congress, it takes only a few minutes in the bicam meeting for a lucky congressman or senator to secure billions of pork which he/she can pocket with the COA looking upwards to Mars.

Per EdCom II, it takes 15 YEARS for a teacher to get a P4,320 salary increase, from P27,000 (Teacher 1), to P31,320 (Teacher 3). That’s an average salary increase per year of P288 in 15 years, not even enough to buy the turon merienda of a congressman or senator, daily. A teacher’s pay increase is called “limited career advancement.” A congressman’s billions or pork is called “public works.”

Teachers pour more than 40 hours of work per week, because they do 40 other things called administrative work. Our senators and congressman work at most the equivalent of 70 days a year.

A senator and a congressman each makes P3-million base salary a year, plus get as pork P100 million per congressman and P200 million per senator, each year. The lucky ones get billions of pork.

There is a word for a rule by the incompetent and the worst of men: kakistocracy. It rhymes with kleptocracy.

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