I glanced at this thought in my mind more than three times in light of our advocacy campaign in RELSFOR which is in the Freedom from Debt Coalition and in light of the current situation in the Senate of the Philippines and the House of Representatives wherein they are digging each other’s arses to save themselves from controversy. Not a first time in Philippine politics but everytime it happens, I sense like something else is coming up after the digging like a coup d’ etat or a rally to EDSA. The politicians have these weapons at their disposal and they will surely use this whenever needed to save their asses from being discovered by the lost and confused public. Just take the case of the ZTE NBN deal. My mother was telling a recap of the Senate hearing the other day involving this whistle-blower named Jun Lozada. So I was just listening to my mother’s story and he mentions one part that resembles of a project overpricing. She mentions that Jun Lozada was ordered by the COMELEC chairman Ben Abalos to spare him some 130 million USD kickback for the project I just thought something while I was seating in the front seat of the car. I just thought what the F? I mean I haven’t watched the whole hearing and the moral stuff that they were discussing but I think no person in his right mind will be able to lie about where an amount like $130 million had gone. That’s $130 million for Christ’s sake. Php 5 billion if that was converted to our currency. That was just total ownage. I’d be able to live a minimum of 100 lifetimes all again and again without studying, working or earning extra money if I had that amount. $130 million for La Salle would be more than enough to buy Ateneo de Manila and vice-versa.

So Speaker de Venecia and his son Joey do a harakiri in the House of Reps and they get kicked in the butt. Whistle-blower Jun Lozada gets accidentally involved in the broadband deal and gets dragged and almost gets kidnapped. But let’s set into reality. This one is not an isolated case. The ZTE deal was not the first overpriced project of the Philippine governments. And surely it’s not the biggest overpriced project. The mother of all the overpriced projects in the Philippines is the nuclear power plant in Bataan. For the record, the government (or the nation, I shall say) is paying $155000 per day for that plant and yet no benefit is generated because the power plant is idle. Luckily, the debt servicing for the power plant, I think, is over or is nearing its completion. That’s what I heard. There are lots more of illegitimate debts that have been created by the projects that are overpriced so much. From the textbook Scandal, the North Railway construction that seems to have not progressed because of anomalies and the poll automatization projects, the Philippine government seems to have no project that has been or is not overpriced or corrupted. In the end, the people suffer. How? Look at the budget allocation of the Philippines. Majority of the percentage (more than 50 percent) of the debt allocation of the country is focused on debt servicing, which in turn leaves lesser allocation for government services and government branches. So the next time that you renew your license or your passport and the employee in front of you is retarded, do not wonder anymore. Just think of the budget allocation that this country has been following and you will understand why. The past governments resorted to many payment methods including the privatization of government-owned corporations. So they sold PAL, PNB, PLDT, and deregulated all the oil companies all in the name of debt servicing. We all suffer, of course.

Well, honestly, we were not supposed and we were not obliged to pay the illegitimate debts because nobody benefited from it. Now why are we? Because of Cory Aquino’s speech in the joint US Congress session. Remember this line. “If only for honor, we will pay all our debts”. Remember that. Cory was a good president because she was the heir to the throne after Marcos was ousted via a bloodless revolution but this is one of the most bonehead mistakes of her presidency, and even one of the biggest mistakes to the nation. You don’t pay debts that are not yours, even though it’s for ‘honor’. Let Marcos and his cronies pay the debts. Come on, Filipinos should have expected better from Mrs. Aquino back then, and not only expect for something like honor. We would look more honorable had we not paid the illegitimate debts that were not really debts of the nation.

Which now brings me to my point - why does it seem that every government project is overpriced? I can’t find any major or medium-scale projects that are not overpriced. Call me bias but this is what I’m seeing from the government. Kickbacks. Cheap quality materials for the price of high-quality materials. What consciences do they have to mock the taxpayers of their money like this and yet these taxpayers pay them their salaries? How the hell are they able to do that in front of the observing (and also ranting) public? How are they able to pull mathematical tricks to overprice projects and bag millions of profits? Maybe we really now need a super transparent government - one that will show the total costing of a project to the public and letting them decide if the price is overpriced or not or if it is relevant. Case in point, the cyber education project. Okay, assuming that the whole thing is not overpriced, it’s still irrelevant. There are still more projects that are of priority rather than embarking on this ambitious and high-risk project. The government first needs to solve (1) the declining quality of education and teacher quality in public schools; (2) provision of classrooms and chairs; (3) provision of the proper books, not those that teach wrong things and bullcrap; (4) improvement of teacher compensation; (5) improvement of school facilities. These priorities and more come before the cyber education plan because it’s obvious that if one does not know the basics, he has no right to engage in cyber education even though it’s the age of computers. Something really is inefficient in this government and nobody has tried to catch the culprit - or nobody just has made the effort from the ranks. Somehow, someway, nobody has hastened up red tape so that they can change project figures and gain profit. My classes in public finance say that the government system has many loopholes for inefficiencies. Every project experiences red tape so that not only one will be liable in case the project fails. so they sign it to this authority and to this contractor, therefore paving for more ways to cheat. These bastards in the government have found them all and are looking for more loopholes. The nation is falling into debt because of this combination of inefficiencies and bastards. People need to have an advocacy in this times of corruption and deceit from some people in the government. Maybe that’s also the reason why I was sent to the Freedom from Debt Coalition for the community service. Maybe it’s my calling as a future economist to advocate against illegitimate projects and ergo avoiding illegitimate debts. I don’t know. Maybe this is the start of a calling - or a career. And I hope many people like me will realize that most of the government projects of the Philippines are overpriced and we bleed just to pay for debts - all in the name of honor.

And one more last question. Why do people keep calling the House of Representatives as the ‘Congress’? Don’t they realize that the Congress represents the combined Upper House which is the Senate and the Lower House which is the House of Representatives? Or are they just lazy? So all of the Legislators should be called congressmen and congresswomen, not only the people from the House of Reps.