Where's the silver lining?

One thought that a 3-piece column would suffice to cover the blunders and failures of the government, breeding graft and corruption, and bloated spending of public funds left unchecked.

So far, the graft and corruption syndrome is true in all branches - the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary - and seeping through the organic entities of the bureaucracy and the LGUs with impunity. Likewise, the overspending propensity inures into a vicious habit, from the SOP modus operandi to payola, and "savings" larceny of varied nomenclature.

Even as uncovered by post-audits of vouchers of government transactions by the Commission on Audit (COA), the sad inevitability is often tinged with irregularity, impropriety, if not outright illegality. In short, the rule is dirty deals, very seldom clean transactions.

The bitter truth so far, there has been no change for the better, or some improvement of the culture of thievery and/or larceny in public governance and transactions. The initial fears upon the new administration's "pasiatab" of reforms have vanished as the reforms were all lip service, and nothing more.

There are still nagging problems whose solutions are not impossible to address if only the ordinary bureaucracy has the political will to stamp out at their level. For instance, what have the Dept. of Labor and allied agencies, and Congress itself, done to confront four-square the long pestering "contractual" labor that's the bane of steady employment?

There's also that P5 to P6 per liter difference of gasoline/diesel prices at filling stations in Cebu vis-à-vis the retail prices in Manila and other parts of the country, including Mindanao? Cebuanos had been elated that the Secretary of Energy, Sec. Jose Rene D. Almendras, a Cebuano, has taken over the helm of the DOE. And yet, until now there's no silver lining in the horizon.

Likewise, in the field of education, the long nasty sub-standard and chaotic state of quality of its products have continued to persist in promoting and graduating literally a bunch of illiterates. Being a non-politician, hopes have been quite high on Bro. Armin Luistro to change and reform the system. And yet so far, Luistro's very simplistic but trial-and-error strategy is to implement the K+12, that is, kindergarten plus 12 years of elementary, secondary and college curricula. Before kindergarten, there's the so-called pre-school; thus, 2K+12 or 14 years in all.

Practically, from media reports nationwide in public (mis)governance, the harried COA finds persistent mega corruption, overspending, overdraft and deficit-spending, accumulating cash advances, etc. in almost all departments, GOCCs and GFIs, bureaus, and ad-hoc entities, and all LGUs have become the bitter rule, including unaccounted funds in millions being lost.

In the field of private economy and future investments to generate employment for economic development, at least at par with ASEAN countries, may be something else… There is, for example, the US future investment of $434 M purportedly gleaned by President Noynoy's recent travel, to generate some 25,000 Pinoys in employment. Could it be a silver lining, as against negative advisories of six supposed allies including USA and Great Britain?

Then, there are the too ambitious development plans, say, connecting Cebu and Bohol, or linking Cebu and Negros provinces. Wow, what grandiose and colossal dreams, as against the stupendous problems inland piling up without solutions!

Oh yes, there's the OFW dollar remittances of $21.3 Billion this year, but at the awful sacrifices of the poor OFW workers in lives, liberties, and broken homes. The cavalier calling of OFWs as "heroes" isn't that consoling. It pales beyond measure what an economic expert has estimated accumulated losses due to misgovernance have reached about $3 Trillions, beyond the mathematical computation of an ordinary Pinoy.

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