The opportunity to remake society so that “right is might” and all are afforded the chance to have a better life in a condition of equality will slip away unless the citizens act now. We should demand that any economic stimulus package should be in tandem with a moral recovery program. We should insist that that those who implement these measures adhere to high ethical standards. The new US president, Barack Obama has shown the way.
In accepting the withdrawal of two of his appointees to the cabinet, he averred to the need to maintain the public’s trust by having officials who follow the law. In the Philippines, how many government officials from the top to the bottom, from the national to the local levels and from the three branches of government still have the trust of the Filipino people? They have lost the people’s mandate (assuming they had it in the first place), because by their actions or inactions they have been perceived to protect the corrupt, to have caused the award of lucrative contracts to cronies, to have paid off legislators to abort the democratic process of holding public officials accountable for their decisions, to provide largess to the military so that they do not follow the Constitutional mandate that their ultimate masters are the Filipino people, and to appoint not the deserving professionals and private sector executives but those whose main qualifications are blind loyalty and slavish obedience.
President Barack Obama has also called on private sector executives to adhere to compensation limits that are in keeping with the global economic crisis. In the Philippines, how many business leaders are models of good citizenship? How many of them pay the right taxes, compensate their household help adequately and treat them with the respect due human beings? How many of them mimic government officials with convoys of vehicles, police escorts and a phalanx of bodyguards? How many of them use their positions in business organizations to butter up to those in power in order to be appointed to sinecures in the boards of government corporations, to obtain concessional loans from government financial institutions or to be invited to foreign trips by a globetrotting president?
It is time for change. Being the ultimate optimist, I believe we can change. It should begin by changing ourselves to become good citizens; caring for others even if they are not family or friends; acting for the common good; teaching our children through our own examples the virtue of honest work; and living simply, using excess wealth to create jobs for the Filipino people. We should call on those in power to change so that they have the moral ascendancy to lead. And if they do not, we should change them.
>Business Bits. We commend the World Bank and the German government for making available a $500 million fund through the Microfinance Enhancement Facility of the International Finance Corporation and the German Development bank KfW to support microfinance institutions amidst the global economic crisis. It will provide refinancing to more than 100 microfinance institutions in 40 countries reaching around 60 million low-income borrowers.
ll over the world, governments are unveiling stimulus packages to save their economies from depression, lift them from recession or maintain positive growth rates. These measures encompass tax cuts, direct subsidies to the poor, bailouts for banks and other key financial institutions, special loans for strategic industries like the automotive sector, immediately implementable infrastructure projects and training programs or livelihood projects for the displaced workers and unemployed. All these are designed to restore public confidence in the market system, encourage greater spending and bring the global economy back on track.