Back then, I wrote an article where I discussed the stupidity of the "If it's bitter, just add sugar." mindset. In Cebuano, it's, "Kung pait, butangi lang ug asukal". The mentality itself has kept many people poor. It would go with how people just want to have a good time. It can be observed in how people deal with their salary hence explaining their financial situation (read here). With Christmas just around the corner (read here), it's very easy to land into the dreaded Holiday Debt Trap (read here). What's next? Would those members of the labor union blame the government and entrepreneurs for the bad decisions they made themselves?
What's with the typical Filipino mindset about money (and sugar)?
Please note that I'm not attacking every single Filipino there are Filipinos who are mindful of their money. Instead, I'm tackling the predominant mindset brought about by the "Kung pait, butangi lang ug asukal" mindset. It seeks to cover up the bitterness by just adding sugar. Payday sure is fun, right? That's until one discovers that they have a lot of obligations. Knowing the typical mindset among Filipinos, it can be irritating to any Filipino who chooses to be financially savvy. It would be like, "Man, I do have a lot of problems! I have this and that! Wait, I forgot I still have gambling debts and I owe so many people a lot of money."
Instead of facing the problem head-on, one chooses to be like Tomas Mascardo whom General Antonio Luna faced. Mascardo left his battle post to attend a town fiesta. Some Filipinos are comparable to that when they choose to have a good time. Do they have all the bills and debts to pay? Instead of facing it head-on, here are some half-brained ways they choose to be like Mascardo with their finances:
- They choose to attend a town fiesta when they have work to do. In short, you can imagine asking for a leave to attend a town fiesta because of some important family event like the graduation of one's child, attending to one's wife giving birth, maternity leave for women employees, or any important family activity. If they say attending fiestas helps them forget their problem then I must laugh or bang my head on the desk or wall, over at that remark!
- When it's payday, instead of choosing to focus on the expenditures, they decide to go eat out first and take care of expenditures later. Even worse, they eat out with their peers at places that are beyond their budget. They could have their eat-outs, nothing wrong with that, but make sure that they're having it at a place that they can afford instead of expensive places. They can also think about, "Do I have money for barkada (peer) eatouts?" The result is that they end up having to compound debt with debt when they keep borrowing money (but never returning) to make ends meet. That could've been avoided if they chose to take their of their expenditures first.
- When Christmas is around the corner, one can expect even the Christmas bonus and 13th-month pay aren't spared from their spendthrift lifestyle. What happens next is that with Christmas and New Year around the corner, it can lead to the scenario where they borrow money for the Noche Buena (Christmas dinner) and end up also borrowing money for the New Year's dinner (read here). It can only cause compounded debt all the more. Then when that happens, the friend will say, "Let's just attend the town fiesta to forget about your problems."
Research has found that too much added sugar can affect your health in many ways.For instance, a study published online Sept. 3, 2019, by JAMA Internal Medicine looked at more than 450,000 people over a 16-year period and found that those who drank two or more 8-ounce glasses of sugar-sweetened soda a day had a higher risk of dying for any reason than people who drank less than a glass each month. Drinking large amounts of artificially sweetened sodas was also associated with earlier death.Consuming too much sugar also can increase chronic inflammation. And higher sugar consumption has also been linked to a higher risk of frailty as we age. A study in the May 2018 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that older adults who consumed more than 36 grams per day of added sugar were more likely to become frail compared with those who consumed less than 15 grams daily.One of the biggest threats from added sugar is weight gain. Your body doesn't know the difference between natural sugar and added sugar. They both get processed the same way. The important difference is how fast the body digests them. "Foods with natural sugar — fruits and vegetables — also contain soluble fiber, which means your body digests the accompanying sugars more slowly," says Dr. Sun. In comparison, added sugar lacks fiber, so it's absorbed much faster. "This can cause blood sugar levels to spike, leading to an insulin surge, which can increase hunger," says Dr. Sun.
This might explain the Christmas party gluttony and the New Year party gluttony. I think about how typical Filipino Christmas parties and New Year parties are, whether at home or near the neighbors. It's a fat-loaded feast. The Christmas feast tends to have the lechon as the star of the show. You have a lot of foods with added sugar. I could remember how the Facebook page Silent No More PH was complaining about the price of whipped cream. Some were complaining about the price of pork. Sweet ham is also a Christmas must-have for many Filipinos who celebrate Christmas. Ham is already made from pork, the fat is usually eaten, and it's got lots of sugar too. Talk about double the fat and double the sugar. Refined sugar is digested so much faster, which can increase hunger, and can encourage gluttony during both Christmas parties and New Year parties.
I was reminded of a discussion I had with a Filipino about how the typical Filipino may age faster. I guess it's not much about genetics but about how high sugar consumption combined with a sedentary lifestyle might contribute to it. I guess that's why, as a Filipino, I can easily see a lot of my fellow citizens, gain a lot of weight so easily. I knew some local maids who were so obsessed with sugar that they were obese. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them had died from triglycerides.
Even worse, some people associate such unhealthy habits with their "Filipino identity". Fortunately, culture is not so static as proven by Filipinos who are making headlines also as businessmen and scientists.
Why a change of mindset is required to get sweeter results?
This can be likened to the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination program.
The same goes for financial investments
Economic protectionism is giving excess sugar to Filipino businesses with very bitter results for Filipinos
Pages 57-58After several years of disheartening trial and error, we concluded that Singapore's best hope lay with the American multinational corporations (MNCs). When the Taiwanese and Hong Kong entrepreneurs came in the 1960s, they brought low technology such as textile and toy manufacturing, labor-intensive but not large-scale. American MNCs brought higher technology in large-scale operations, creating many jobs. They had weight and confidence. They believed that their government was going to stay in Southeast Asia and their businesses were safe from confiscation or war loss.I gradually crystallized my thoughts and settled on a two-pronged strategy to overcome our disadvantages. The first was to leapfrog the region, as the Israelis had done. This idea sprang from a discussion I had with a UNDP expert who visited Singapore in 1962. In 1964, while on a tour of Africa, I met him again in Malawi. He described to me how the Israelis, faced with a more hostile environment than ours, had found a way around their difficulties by leaping over their Arab neighbors who boycotted them, to trade with Europe and America. Since our neighbors were out to reduce their ties with us, we had to link up with the developed world-America, Europe, and Japan-and attract their manufacturers to produce in Singapore and export their products to the developed countries.The accepted wisdom of development economists at the time was that MNCs were exploiters of cheap land, labor, and raw materials. This "dependency school" of economists argued that MNCs continued the colonial pattern of exploitation that left the developing countries selling raw materials to and buying consumer goods from the advanced countries. MNCs controlled technology and consumer preferences and formed alliances with their host governments to exploit the people and keep them down. Third World leaders believed this theory of neocolonialist exploitation, but Keng Swee and I were not impressed. We had a real-life problem to solve and could not afford to be conscribed by any theory or dogma. Anyway, Singapore had no natural resources for MNCs to exploit. All it had were hard-working people, good basic infrastructure, and a government that was determined to be honest and competent. Our duty was to create a livelihood for 2 million Singaporeans. If MNCs could give our workers employment and teach them technical and engineering skills and management know-how, we should bring in the MNCs.
Page 66
Our job was to plan the broad economic objectives and the target periods within which to achieve them. We reviewed these plans regularly and adjusted them as new realities changed the outlook. Infrastructure and the training and education of workers to meet the needs of employers had to be planned years in advance. We did not have a group of readymade entrepreneurs such as Hong Kong gained in the Chinese industrialists and bankers who came fleeing from Shanghai, Canton, and other cities when the communists took over. Had we waited for our traders to learn to be industrialists we would have starved. It is absurd for critics to suggest in the 1990s that had we grown our own entrepreneurs, we would have been less at the mercy of the rootless MNCs. Even with the experienced talent Hong Kong received in Chinese refugees, its manufacturing technology level is not in the same class as that of the MNCs in Singapore.
Pages 68-69
If I have to choose one word to explain why Singapore succeeded, it is confidence. This was what made foreign investors site their factories and refineries here. Within days of the oil crisis in October 1973, I decided to give a clear signal to the oil companies that we did not claim any special privilege over the stocks of oil they held in their Singapore refineries. If we blocked export from those stocks, we would have enough oil for our own consumption for two years, but we would have shown ourselves to be completely undependable. I met the CEOs or managing directors of all the oil refineries-Shell, Mobil, Esso, Singapore Petroleum, and British Petroleum on 10 November 1973. I assured them publicly that Singapore would share in any cuts they imposed on the rest of their customers, on the principle of equal misery. Their customers were in countries as far apart as Alaska, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand, besides those in the region.
This decision increased international confidence in the Singapore government, that it knew its long-term interest depended on being a reliable place for oil and other business. As a result, the oil industry confidently expanded into petrochemicals in the late 1970s. By the 1990s, with a total refining capacity of 1.2 million barrels per day, Singapore had become the world's third largest oil-refining center after Houston and Rotterdam, the third largest oil trading center after New York and London, and the largest fuel oil bunker market in volume terms. Singapore is also a major petrochemical producer.
To overcome the natural doubts of investors from advanced countries over the quality of our workers, I had asked the Japanese, Germans, French, and Dutch to set up centers in Singapore with their own instructors to train technicians. Some centers were government-financed, others were jointly formed with such corporations as Philips, Rollei, and Tata. After 4 to 6 months of training, these workers, who were trained in a factory-like environment, became familiar with the work systems and cultures of the different nations and were desirable employees. These training institutes became useful points of reference for investors from these countries to check how our workers compared with theirs. They validated the standards of Singapore workers.
It was time to break out of the comfort zone of the development economists of LKY's day. Later, the Singaporean Indian policymaker, Kishore Mahbubani, even stated what FDIs would do to the country. It was breaking away from what people were used to, to something that they aren't used to but has benefited other nations. In time, such progress even impressed two Communist countries namely China and Vietnam. The late Deng Xiaoping and the late Do Muoi both learned from LKY, even if both men carried the Communist insignia with them. LKY got Singaporeans out of their comfort zone instead of pampering them. The result was that Singapore started to become a prosperous city. That's why I tell certain Facebook pages (such as anti-business pages or any pages defending the outdated 1987 Constitution of the Philippines) to, "Tell that to Singapore." Yes, tell it to Singapore, especially to the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP).
If Filipino businesses were faced with more competition, then think of what revising the negative list did. I could think of the benefits that limited FDI (which needs to be increased while giving proper restrictions on capital movement) has given to the Philippines:
- Jollibee, once a small bee, had become an MNC that's investing in many areas of the world. I could really make jokes that Jollibee can now be red-tagged as it reached 150 branches in Vietnam or possibly even more. Whoever says that Filipinos aren't capable of improving or coming up with something great is dreaming.
- The use of foreign delivery services is another. For example, we have both Grab and Foodpanda. There may be soon more delivery services. An FDI isn't invincible either as Foodpanda, a German firm, is now having problems in Southeast Asia. What I can't deny is that I could enjoy a lot of local Filipino food thanks to both companies.
The same goes for the presidential system which adds too much sugar to politics
Last week, House Speaker Jose de Venecia called on Mahathir in the course of a five-day visit to Malaysia, swinging across from Kuala Lumpur, Sarawak and Sabah. The visit was primarily intended to conduct consultations with Malaysian foreign minister Syed Hamid Albar on the future of the envisioned ASEAN Community and on de Venecia’s proposal to create an ASEAN Parliamentary Council.
Always forthright in his views, Mahathir was not shy about his opinions on the Philippines, even as he qualified those views with a polite disclaimer about non-interference in our internal affairs.
He bluntly told de Venecia that the "Filipino people need a break."
In the context of their conversation, that "break" is understood as a respite from the hyper-politicking that has plagued our country of late. That hyper-politicking has gotten in the way of our efforts to improve our economy, raise productivity and build a better future for our people.
Hyper-politicking has produced gridlock, endless bickering and neglect of urgent policy actions. It has undermined investor confidence in our economy and prevented willful leadership from being exercised – the same sort of leadership that Mahathir himself deployed in bringing Malaysia up from backwater economy status to that of an "Asian tiger."
Mahathir agreed with de Venecia that a parliamentary system of government could work better in the Philippines because it ensures "continuity in policy and the faster pace of approvals of development programs."
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| No gossip, no hearsay, face-to-face debates, liars are slapped in the parliamentary system! |
With the parliamentary system, everything goes from jingle campaigns to party platforms. That means none of those jingles are dedicated to a person but to a party. For example, party campaigns aren't going to be for Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. or Atty. Maria Leonor S. Gerona-Robredo. Instead, it will focus on their respective parties. If Marcos Jr. becomes the prime minister then Mrs. Robredo becomes the opposition leader. Marcos Jr. will have his cabinet from his party. Mrs. Robredo will have her shadow cabinet from her party.
Economist Andrew James Masigan, a supporter of Mrs. Robredo, also notes this one when it comes to understanding charter change:
FEDERAL-PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT
As mentioned earlier, the Duterte administration plans to a shift our form of government from a Unitary-Presidential form to a Federal-Parliamentary form. To better appreciate how a Federal-Parliamentary system works, it s best to look at it in contrast to a Federal-Presidential system.
A Federal-Presidential system offers no change to the current system where the President is elected through a national election and heads the executive branch. He has no sway on the judicial or legislative branches except through party-line influence. The United States operates under a Federal-Presidential framework.
A Federal-Parliamentary system , on the other hand, encourages people to vote according to political parties. Here, the citizens elect their Members of Parliament (their representatives), most often, based on the ideology of the party they belong to, not on their personalities. The party with the most number of elected representatives is declared “the parliament.” The parliament elects its Prime Minister (PM) from among themselves. The PM, in turn, selects the members of his Cabinet (his ministers) from among the members of the parliament.
There are multiple advantages to this. First, the system does away with expensive and divisive presidential elections. It puts an end to the vicious cycle of presidential candidates resorting to corruption and incurring political debts just to raise funds for their campaign.
Even the poor can run for office so long as they are capable. This is because elections are funded by the party. In a federal-parliamentary system, we do away with people who win on the back of guns goons and gold.
Moreover, since the members of parliament selects the Prime Minister, they can easily remove him through a vote of no-confidence should he fail to fulfill his mandate. We do away with the tedious process of impeachment. And since the ministers are selected from the Parliament, no one gets a free ticket to the Cabinet just because they are friends with the President or nominated by a political ally. The ministers all have mandates and are accountable not only to the PM but to their constituents.
The parliament is a unicameral legislative body. Thus, bills can be made into law faster and cheaper.
A parliamentary system is one where a “shadow Cabinet” exists. A shadow Cabinet is the corresponding, non-official Cabinet composed of members of the opposition. Each Cabinet minister has a shadow equivalent who is mandated to scrutinize every policy done by the official minister. The shadow minister may offer alternative policies which can be adopted if it is deemed superior.
In the end, the systems allows policies to be better thought out with appropriate safeguards to protect the interest of the people.
Among the seven wealthiest democracies (the G7 nations), only US and France follow a presidential system. the rest subscribe to a parliamentary system.
The intentions of charter change is good. Done right, it could be a game changer for the nation.
Weekly debates between the two sides make it easier to talk over policies. For example, Marcos Jr. as the prime minister, must uphold the confidence of the whole Parliament. Mrs. Robredo as the opposition leader must show the Parliament that she's capable of scrutinizing the Marcos Jr.-led government. Sure, the election campaigns might feel boring. There wouldn't be any of the ads of Marcos Jr. and Mrs. Robredo. However, it does get interesting when both of their parties start to grill each other every week.
I would compare this scenario to marinating barbecue for a certain period. Sure, it can be frustrating to wait until all the flavor sips in. However, a barbecue that has been marinated for a reasonably longer period will be tastier. The presidential system is so concerned about short-term results. The parliamentary system is focused on long-term planning and weekly scrutiny.