Fixing a broken Philippines

It seems that the dreams with which Jose Rizal died exactly 129 years ago at his execution by the Spanish colonizers are the same dreams we dream today, in a society still mired in the corruption, oppression, and injustice Rizal wrote about in his time. The painful difference is that those evils are no longer coming from foreign colonizers, but from fellow Filipinos, making the social cancer Rizal described then even harder, in many ways, to excise now. We’re caught in an evil web that has permeated all parts and levels of government, business, and economic institutions, the educational system, and even down to the minds and hearts of the ordinary citizenry. We are trapped in a vicious cycle of corruption abetting and funding campaigns of political dynasties whose hold on power is perpetuated by an electoral system that permits them to abuse it, and an educational system unable to foster the electoral maturity that would stop it. But it is these very dynasties that manage to create the conditions that keep the electoral and educational systems the way they are.

Our country is broken because it is stuck in a political-economic equilibrium that rewards predation more than production, thievery more than creativity. It’s in equilibrium because the situation has seemingly become stable, unchanging, and even self-reinforcing. Fixing it requires disrupting this equilibrium, which will need profound changes to somehow happen on various fronts: in governance, in education, in the economy, in our communities, and in the very hearts and minds of ordinary citizens.

Politics, with the fabulous illicit incomes it can bring, has become a family business for dynasties that control elections through money, name recall, and patronage, making an antidynasty law a long-needed fix on the governance front. Will the antidynasty measure currently pending in Congress finally change things? Some applaud it as a game changer, but others see in it loopholes that would keep dynasties alive. Other critical governance fixes include a strong political party system, strict enforcement of campaign finance rules, independent prosecution of corrupt officials, and complete budget transparency from preparation to execution. Some progress has been made on the last, thanks to Senate finance committee chair Sherwin Gatchalian’s openness and willingness to collaborate with the People’s Budget Coalition and the thousands of volunteer data analysts behind it. But old habits die hard, and shameless politicians appear to have still managed to have their way with the inclusion of disguised pork and spurious public works allocations in the emerging 2026 budget.

Critical to achieving the above political and governance reforms is an educated electorate, highlighting the vital role of educational reform to ensure wide access to quality education. But this is a long-haul journey whose impacts would only begin to show beyond the current generation of voters. Much work has been done in the Second Congressional Commission on Education, whose recommendations are being translated into legislation and administrative reforms in the education sector. But the often overlooked link is the still-high rate of early childhood malnutrition and stunting that has impaired the learning and cognitive abilities of a quarter of our children in school, for whom education system improvements may help little. And equally overlooked is how malnutrition is not about weak feeding programs, but fundamentally traces to inordinately high food prices beyond the reach of the poor, the outcome of a flawed economic environment.

The fix on the economic front entails shifting from undue economic concentration marked by monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels to healthy economic competition, where large and small enterprises thrive side by side. A strong competition policy impels innovation and productivity improvement, translating to lower costs and prices for food and nonfood essentials—thereby striking at the root of our malnutrition and education crisis. A competitive and democratized economy friendly to small farms and firms, in turn, forestalls capture of the political system by moneyed elites and dynastic leaders.

The final crucial front is our own communities and families, whose collective power could be harnessed by galvanizing a national reform coalition. Reform champions across business, the academe, church, youth, basic sectors, and the government itself are needed to spearhead this coalition for change. There’s a silent majority out there just waiting to be led to act in unity and solidarity toward achieving the country we all aspire to. It is only when this silent majority is mobilized to act toward making the needed changes on the governance, education, and economic fronts that we can begin fixing our broken country.