Another Blue Christmas

“Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?”
- from “Yahweh” by U2

It is Christmas season once again and it seems there is not much going on. When I say “going on”, I mean improvement in the lives of the ordinary Filipinos.

In fact, “improvement” is not even the appropriate term; for this column would be glad to proclaim if the majority still feel at least the same level of satisfaction (or more accurately: destitution) from the previous year.

Try to ask around and check how people think they fared today compared to the previous Christmases. Well, for sure majority will confirm this, albeit, with smiling faces, what with the Filipinos’ capacity to smile in the face of extreme hardship.

The year 2007 is about to end and clearly this year marks ever deeper hardship for the Filipino family. It was a year of steep increases in the cost of basic commodities as well as other services and goods.

For one the cost of petroleum products have increased many times we even lost count as to the actual number of increases. Along with these came the increases in the prices of goods which are dependent in different levels to oil inputs.

Jeepney fares also increased, which is I think the highest single increase as far as I can remember. And yes of course the electricity rates! This was indeed another year of steep increases in power rates and more is to come as the fuel cost continue to soar. Add to that the continuing anti-consumer practices of PECO, other private power distribution companies and electric cooperatives.

Well, we may ask, since when did these prices stop increasing? Good question, but this was a year with the sharpest rise in the cost of different products and the nominal cost of living as a whole.

Secondly, it’s not only a function of the rate of increases of the various commodities and services. It is also a function of the stunted level of incomes of the poor Filipinos especially the ordinary workers. Well I don’t want to whine about the recently approved adjustment in the minimum wage because that will take another article. The bottom line is -- our capacity to buy remains very low and continues to be eroded.

This was another year of hardship to the majority of Filipinos while the government is busy window-dressing the economy.

This fiscal crisis, which has in fact been around as early as the year 2001, is manifested in the budget, spending and new borrowings of the national government. Less and less is spent by this government for social (housing, health care, education) and economic (infrastructure) services as it borrows more and more to pay for its debts.

No wonder more Filipinos are going out and even more are planning to go out, not for a greener pasture (for we can’t even say that what we have in the Philippines is still green!), but simply for a green one.

I sure hope that these dark days will be over soon as we wake up to a new dawn. Wishful thinking…

Trivia: This article is largely based from an article I wrote in December 2004. The funny thing is – I only did a few editing and the article seems to be current. The situation holds true then as much as today. That is the sad reality.

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