Is this what it feels like to be desperately trying to catch up after being left so far behind and/or held back for so long?
It has become clear by now that because of the priorities and the competencies (or lack thereof) of the previous administration, we have been left with a country where the education system is among the worst in the world, the justice system was perverted, human rights have been sent back to the dark ages, and national territory was practically given away to the neighborhood bully.
What we are now left with is a country that, at the very least, has to find its way back to where it was back in 2016, while everyone else that we were legitimately competing with back then is already in 2024, looking toward their future, without having to worry about making up for lost time.
The theme of catching up is best illustrated in our justice system, where it was only this week that former Senator and Justice Secretary Leila de Lima was finally cleared of all the trumped up drug charges that the justice department of the Rodrigo Duterte administration unleashed upon her. De Lima lost 7 years of her life in detention, unable to do the job she was elected for properly, as her cowed colleagues in the coequal branch of government pretended she did not exist, out of fear of facing the Davao brand of retribution that our voters were made to think our country needed.
That administration’s justice department was not afraid of fabricating evidence and pressuring/bribing witnesses, basically bastardizing the country’s justice system in its quest to neutralize and humiliate De Lima, while at the same time sending a warning shot to the opposition and cowing those who were considering not toeing their line. To make matters worse, we all just watched it happen and did nothing about it for more than 6 years.
There is also our dispute with China at the West Philippine Sea, where we were supposed to be making good progress after our government had worked its ass off to get a favorable ruling from an International Tribunal, which was supposed to give us a better chance at diplomatically and legally beating back the Chinese aggression into our own exclusive economic zone.
What happened instead was that our dear leader then chose to not only pocket that ace, but even entered into a “gentleman’s agreement” with the enemy that was so grossly disadvantageous to the country that it could now be defined as treason.
All that work we put into fighting for our territory and resources was thrown away by the shortsighted decision making of a “strongman” who turned out to be the biggest coward, especially when facing a bigger (and smarter) bully. That set us back more than 6 years, and only God knows how long it will take to claw our way back from that blunder.
And then there’s education, which is supposedly universally understood as the foundation for any hope for a better future. Unfortunately for the Philippines, we’ve found ourselves instead mired in a learning crisis so profound that the future doesn’t look very bright for millions of young Filipinos. How we got here, from a point in time when things were looking up as the perennial classroom backlog was finally erased less than a decade ago, is anybody’s guess. Was it our attempt to shift to K-12 and change the academic calendar? Or was it another case of poor leadership in the DepEd? Anyway, as far as education secretaries are concerned, here are the past two ones: the first may have been from the academe, but was an octogenarian; while the second, who just resigned, is not an educator at all by any stretch of the imagination. Hopefully, this time around our president takes the problem seriously and forgoes politics to put someone who is more suited for the job and up to the challenge of fixing our broken education system.
Another area where we seem to be playing catch up is in human rights, which had been largely forgotten and even villainized during the previous administration’s flagship program, a murderously indiscriminate drug war that saw up to 30,000 people killed without the benefit of a trial. It is only now that the victims of the government’s ridiculously heavy hand have gathered the courage to fight back, as they have seen the justice department showing signs of healing. One such case is that of Spaniard Diego Bello, a surfer who was killed in Siargao by cops who sold it as a shootout with a drug lord. His parents have been fighting to get justice for him, and despite facing enormous difficulties, have finally seen a sliver of light. Perhaps, as the people who make up our justice system try to make amends for allowing it to be bastardized, justice in our country will also catch up and make up for its era of grievous shortcomings.
The catch up game is a bittersweet one because while some may be glad that we are finally moving in the right direction once more, one can’t also help but mourn the time, and in our case, lives and sovereign territory lost because once upon a time, we put the wrong people in charge. Hopefully we learn our lessons and don’t allow the same thing to happen again.*
