Desperately looking

EDITORIAL

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01/04/2009

Malacañang went completely out of line when it asked its critics to present concrete steps to address a looming surge in unemployment this year as the destructive winds of the global financial turmoil hit the country’s ground this year.

Press Secretary Jesus Dureza, who seems to carry a template of denials and dares whenever Gloria is confronted with a crisis situation, said that predictions of a sharp rise in unemployment was a case of raising alarms and he dared the doomsayers to present concrete steps to address the imminent crisis.

It was the height of braggadocio for the government to ask analysts and economists to present a plan that government should already have had anyway except for the possibility that it is still groping on what to do, as it is clear that the Gloria administration does not have any plan at all to minimize at the very least, the impact of the global crisis on the country.

It might just be doing that — that is, challenging economists and analysts to come up with a plan for Gloria to latch on and later claim it was her plan all along — in the Palace’s desperation for a credible action to meet the crisis head on.

The poor guys’ jobs are what their names imply, which is to analyze figures and predict where the economy is going. The job of crafting solutions to economic problems used to be the domain of the government — that is until Gloria and her cabal came along.

Gloria had lined up thus far a so-called resiliency package that was only new in name but is the same program that was applied on the oil price crisis and later on to the problem of surging rice prices, which plan consisted mainly of the provision of so-called conditional cash transfers of P500 for each poor family and the focusing of public funds for infrastructure spending.

The government had indicated it would spend as much as P300 billion until next year for the pump priming plan that it said would create enough jobs to allow most Filipinos to get over the economic hump. That means more corruption with more money to pocket.

What is facing the nation right now, however, is a deeper problem that would require solutions which are more inventive and resourceful than the run of the mill dole-outs and spending band-aid solutions of Gloria.

Just before the year ended, 2,000 Filipinos were sent home from Taiwan and up to 60,000 more in that country are worried about lay offs as the global crisis bites on most of that country’s industries.

Filipinos working in South Korea, Japan, the United States and most countries in Europe are also facing the unprecedented fear of returning home jobless — against their will.

The solution being applied by the government thus far is to supposedly seek new markets to re-export the repatriated Filipino labor.

The solution would be going against the wind of the global turmoil, which is to say the least an impossible proposition, since most countries are inclined to close their labor market to foreigners to guarantee that their own labor force would not be displaced by an economic slowdown.

A test on Gloria’s resolve to find a credible answer to the economic turmoil when millions of overseas Filipino workers are laid off and go back home was when Malacañang invited more than 100 OFWs who lost thier jobs in Taiwan for a pre-Christmas meal in Malacañang.

The Palace went all out in announcing a P200 million or so package for the displaced OFWs to supposedly tide over their families while the OFWs find new work abroad.

The OFWs, hailed as heroes by Gloria, went to the Palace with high hopes of getting something that would lighten their grief.

After the usual Gloria speeches and photo ops, the poor souls went home disappointed and with a bag of brochures and propaganda materials.

That’s Gloria’s style of addressing the impact of a global crisis.

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