The costs of having wrong leaders
Netherlands—Anyone who has traveled abroad gets a new pair of eyes equipped with perspective. With upgraded vision, we see our country in comparison to advanced societies. We become conscious of our degraded status as a nation and our deprivations as a people, because of the kind of leaders who have ruled and continue to rule over our nation.
We begin to experience indignity even before we leave the country. As a precondition to being allowed to visit almost all developed countries, we are required to obtain a visa. We are burdened with the presumption that every Filipino—rich and poor alike—has the intention of staying as an illegal immigrant in rich countries. It is our obligation to overturn the presumption by showing substantial bank deposits, proving ownership of valuable real properties, and presenting qualifications as a business executive/respected professional/eminent public official. Citizens of developed countries can visit the same countries without being subjected to the same expenses and indignities.
Even with an approved visa, we are looked upon with askance by immigration officers abroad because of our Philippine passports. We are prone to being asked questions, which are not asked other nationalities because of the stigma associated with our poor country.
We get green with envy at the public transportation system of developed countries, which consists of a network of interconnected trains, trams, and buses. Whether there’s an absence or overflow of passengers, their public transports arrive right at the exact minute of their scheduled stops at every station. Even the rich take public transportation because it’s efficient, fast, accessible, and clean. Public service is the underlying purpose of their public transport while, in contrast, private profit is the principal objective of ours because our public transportation vehicles have been farmed out to private businesses. Instead of heavily investing in trains, trams, and buses, our government funds the expansion of highways, the building of skyways, and the construction of diversion roads. Roads serve the private vehicles of the rich and minimally benefit the public transport needs of the poor.
We see wide sidewalks that show genuine care for pedestrians in highly developed countries. In comparison, we remember with infuriation the lack of functional sidewalks in our own cities. Even on our streets that have sidewalks, we see inauthenticity, insincerity, and utter lack of empathy because obstructions abound that make walking difficult for pedestrians.
Our sidewalks are obstructed by electric posts, vending stalls, road signages, trees, and the foundations of elevated pedestrian walkways.
We see public parks, gardens, and tree-lined boulevards that abound in highly functional nations. We see monuments and public works of art standing in ample open spaces around their cities. In contrast, parks, gardens, and roads with trees are only found inside exclusive subdivisions in our country. One problem that we have in this regard is that the leaders of our provinces, cities, and municipalities view public parks as the sole responsibility of the national government. Local leaders must be equipped with the vision to comprehend the dire need for more parks outside of the small gardens surrounding their city and municipal halls. Our local leaders should become park builders in order to provide their constituents with open spaces to enjoy community life.
We see rivers, lakes, and coastal shores that are tidy and unpolluted in developed countries. Promenades and parks are created around their bodies of water, and the private properties that surround them are the priciest real estate in their towns and cities. In contrast, properties surrounding our bodies of water are undesirable residential areas because our waters are heavily polluted. Only the poor build shanties near them.
We see food prices as reasonable relative to the purchasing power of ordinary workers in developed nations. One gets this sense by going to their grocery stores where high-quality food items are purchased even by ordinary people. In contrast, the same foodstuffs are affordable only to the rich in our country. Food expenses constitute a reasonable fraction of a family’s monthly budget for them, while they represent a prohibitively large monthly expense for many of our citizens.
All these consequences of having the wrong kind of leaders become clearly visible when we see societies that are governed by leaders with the right values and foresight. We see that the costs of having wrong leaders go way beyond the amount of public funds that we lose to corruption—our country is stripped of the kind of public good we desperately need in so many aspects of our nation’s life.
With the coming elections, we have another chance to choose our path. Either we choose leaders who have principles and vision, or we continue flagellating ourselves with comedians, fraudsters, and pillagers.
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