Off the beaten trick

Recently, our beloved politicos threw some fierce temper tantrums, ignited apparently by the horrendous traffic, particularly along the routes to Baguio City and Tagaytay City, plus of course the crowded airport in Manila.

Because even people in high places had to endure the long travel time during their out-of-town trips over the holidays, certain legislators seized the golden chance for another touching expression of concern for public welfare.

In no time at all, they managed to threaten to resort to the ultimate force known to mankind: the dreaded congressional big stick called “investigation in aid of legislation.”

Down here in my barangay, the poor guys were just dying for another one of those oft-used tricks called congressional inquiries. Surely it would generate a great deal of publicity for the concerned legislators. Most probably, it would also only end with no concrete result whatsoever to show for it.

Apparently, complaints flew all over mainstream and social media about the long delays of Cebu Pacific Air flights during the holidays. The public also complained of long queues at the toll stations in certain portions of both the South Luzon Expressway and the North Luzon Expressway.

That, apparently, incensed some concerned politicos no end.

Come on—the biggest deal in this country of about 100 million people has always been the Christmas season! It was not as if, well, that the recent Christmas traffic mess happened for the first time ever in this country where public service is hardly a priority. It has always been the beaten track.

Really, all Christmas seasons in the past meant chaotic travel arrangements whether by land, sea or air. In this country, traveling during the Christmas break has always been what military guys would term as a snafu—“situation normal all fuc…d up!” The mess was the norm.

Well, mga boss ko, let me put it more politely: So what else was new?

Even in other countries, for that matter, the airports and the roads would become chaotic during major holidays—or even just on long weekends. Many of you certainly went through the same bedlam, for instance, during the Chinese New Year festivities in Hong Kong. Just try to drive to the shopping outlets during the Thanksgiving weekend in the United States, really, and then we could start talking about madness.

To think that those countries enjoy sufficient infrastructure such as modern hi-tech airports and spotless road networks. Even with all that, they still have to face up to all the confusion and disorder during major holidays.

Like it or not, infrastructure anywhere on this planet was designed for the day-to-day bustle and struggle of ordinary people—not for the holiday convenience of those in high places.

***

And so let us get off the beaten track, and talk about the real problem in this country: poor infrastructure.

We just never had the efficient road, seaport and airport systems for the everyday preoccupation of the regular folk—yes, the poor guys down here in my barangay.

On workdays, the travel time on the bus in this metropolis crawls to a pace a little faster than that of a snail afflicted with arthritis. How long does the bus ride on Edsa end-to-end, for instance, take on a normal weekday? Well, with a bit of luck, around five hours!

By the way, the whole of Edsa is only about 24 kilometers long! Meaning, mga boss ko, at the usual busy city speed limit of 60 kph, the whole stretch should take no more than 30 minutes! Meaning, further, that is how pathetic our infrastructure has become!

The real question for our heroic legislators should then be this: What did the Aquino (Part II) administration do to address our serious problem in infrastructure?

If you would believe a huge segment of the business community, the government hardly paid attention to the infrastructure problem in the past four and a half years of our dear leader Benigno Simeon (aka BS).

And official figures would bear out the sentiment of the business community.

For instance, based on figures culled by the Asian Development Bank, our yearly investments in infrastructure constituted—at most—only 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product during those four years under our leader BS.

The ratio is—at least, as in “minimum”—5 percent of GDP in our Asean neighbors, primarily the four other original members, namely, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, which would be our main rivals for business under the Asean economic integration program that would start in 2015.

To think, mga boss ko, the GDPs of those countries have always been much higher than our GDP, even considering that—after bad economic performance for the first two years of the Aquino (Part II) administration—our GDP finally moved up to more than 6 percent in 2013, which might nevertheless falter a bit in 2014, due to…well, you guessed it, poor infrastructure resulting in the debilitating port congestion.

In other words, our neighbors put into infrastructure much bigger slices of what were already much bigger economic pies to start with, compared to what we put in ours.

But the good news should be that the Aquino (Part II) administration actually lined up 56 infrastructure projects under its version of the PPP, or the “public-private partnership” program, which was actually copied from a program under the previous cute administration of Gloriaetta.

Okay, for the bad news, well, none of those projects has been completed—even after four and a half years of the about-to-end term of our leader BS.