Foresight

  I think what we sorely lack as a country is foresight.  We are too preoccupied with the here and the now that we would rather gamble on things that would benefit us in the short term instead of postponing satisfaction for an ever more fruitful reward in the future.  If countries were given a version of the marshmallow test, we would be proudly waving the banner of the flunkies.

We have politicians skimming off the top of all projects thrown their way.  What Miriam Santiago mentioned during the NBN hearing about the standard kickback rate of 10% was an open secret.  Still I was aghast to hear her say it out loud with almost the entire country listening.  10%.  Imagine that. 

That’s 10% of the witholding taxes we pay every month.  That’s 3% of our gross monthly salary.  That’s 5 hours of work every month ending up in the pocket of some politicians. 

And that is only the tip of the iceberg, add to that the unliquidated advances, the discretionary intelligence funds, the junket trips etc.. etc..  and the number only goes higher.  It’s enough to make you renounce your citizenship.  This has been going on for years and years and will continue to happen for years and years to come.  The end, as the cliché goes, is not in sight.

One of the more despicable (it’s a long story) senior managers I’ve come across in my career once said that for theft to happen, need and opportunity has to exist side by side.  If you’re a politician, opportunity to steal is a given.  As to the need, heck they have to recuperate from all those money they’ve spent during the last election and theres no knowing for sure if they’d be elected to a second term.  Hence, for most politicians, it’s just not a simple matter of carpe diem or seizing the day, it’s a matter of seizing everything that looks green, or in our case, violet.

Which brings me to my earlier contention—lack of foresight.  When you have leaders who are only concerned about the potential number of years that they stay in office, rest assured that they will set goals that can be achieved within that number of years.  While other, and expectedly so, more developed countries set goals in terms of decades, we are still wallowing in the pathetic pool of myopia, of shortsightedness.

I could go on and on about succession planning and the beauty of small gains adding up to huge rewards but I’m getting too riled-up thinking about all these things.  Damn it all.  We’re supposed to be one of the smartest races around, why the hell can’t we get our acts together?  Gad, I wish there’s a plague that would smite all thieving politicians(isn’t this redundant?), perhaps only then can this country get a fighting chance.