Job creation

or to have a new job with longer hours of work.

But wait. This is no time for complacency, according to the President himself.

country bedeviled by a P14.1 trillion debt (and counting), high food prices and food insecurity, sluggish economic growth with a huge trade imbalance, and the prospect of being caught in the theater of war between two hegemons, will surely recoil at the next part of the memorandum.

“All national government agencies and instrumentalities, including GOCCs and SUCs, shall adopt the ‘Bagong Pilipinas’ logo and incorporate the same in their letterheads, websites, official social media accounts, and other documents and instruments pertaining to flagship programs of the government,” the Malacañang memorandum said.

For a cash-strapped nation, burdened with an ever-ballooning military pension system that would lead to fiscal collapse, and pork-hungry legislators appropriating for their graft-riddled pet projects almost a trillion pesos of the national budget, that directive for new letterheads, website designs, signages, and every other adaptation of “Bagong Pilipinas” will cost hundreds of millions, tong-pats excluded.

Soon, if they had not yet commissioned TVJ or Tape, maybe the musically-gifted Larry Gadon, or whoever Paul Soriano decides upon, there could also be a new anthem for Bagong Lipunan’s rebrand. Are our leaders trying to salve the realities of high inflation, low wages, and under-employment through new logos, re-branding and artsy-fartsy, New Society-like illusions of forthcoming “greatness?”

Can optics and slogans thwart hunger, the progressives in Congress ask?

FVR gave us aspirations of “Philippines 2000” as his economic reforms began, but his term ended in 1998, when President Erap’s battlecry “Para sa Mahirap” electrified the lumpen.

Successor GMA promised a “Strong Republic” which fell on the shoals of a Hello Garci scandal and monumental corruption, thus paving the way for Cory’s son, Noynoy, who became PNoy as president brandishing “Daang Matuwid.”

One does not credit President Duterte with any purposive re-branding, and associates “Tokhang” with Bato de la Rosa who became a senator on its recall, something human rights champions accuse the previous government of violations.

The “malasakit” in our campaign tag for Mayor Duterte as “Tapang at Malasakit” was later effectively used by Senator Bong Go, who put up hundreds of Malasakit health centers for the needy.

“Build, Build,Build!” was not national branding. It merely emphasized the need to catch up on our woeful infrastructure, and Duterte delivered massively on that. In fact, many of the projects President Marcos Jr. inaugurated in his first year were initiated by the past government.

Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. captured the presidency by a crafty, well-executed revision of the yellow-reviled history of his father’s authoritarian rule, sweetened by his later clarion call for “pagkakaisa,” which captured the electorate’s dislike for the toxicity engendered by the politics of conflict. Now he seeks to institutionalize both the rewriting of history in their family’s favor, this time through a remake of Bagong Lipunan into Bagong Pilipinas, while the logo visually tries to repeat his campaign theme of unity. Will Bagong Pilipinas succeed in uniting us all towards a common aspiration of what Duterte simplified as “a more comfortable life” for the present generation, and a secure and progressive future for our next generations?

Hopefully.

But only, as Mayor Benjie Magalong of Baguio City and others suggest, if we can excise the culture of corruption and greed institutionalized by years and years of the unbridled practice of rent-seeking by the economic oligarchs and selfaggrandizement of our political leaders.

By Melandrew T. Velasco

FOR the past days we have witnessed how heavy downpours have affected our daily lives.

Many areas in the metropolis were flooded, and once more the importance of trees comes to mind.

Flood mitigation after all, is among the many functions of trees particularly the protection of critical watersheds.

I am reminded of former President Fidel V. Ramos who said “too much water during the rainy season and too little water during summer has become our sad fate of yearly cycles of inundation and drought.” We have to join hands and ensure there is sufficient water supply when and where it is needed. Unfortunately despite the heavy rains, mild El Nino has also set in. The Million Trees Foundation, Inc. (MTFI) recognizes reforestation as a means to ensure sustainable water supply.

It is committed to build on the gains of the Annual Million Trees Challenge (AMTC) program started by MWSS and the green revolution of planting trees includes in the coming years other critical watersheds throughout the country as beneficiaries of AMTC.

It also supports the government’s Enhanced National Greening Program that aims to reforest denuded areas in the country through the AMTC.

In the website of the National Greening Program of DENR, as of August 12, 2022 a total of 1,829,867, 211 seedlings have been planted in two million hectares of land since 2011 under the National Greening Program and Enhanced National Greening Program. DENR targets to reforest another two million hectares.

In my previous article, I wrote about the AMTC awards and the partnerships MTFI has forged with both government and private entities.

That’s the latest from the labor force survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority, with the agency reporting that the unemployment rate dropped to 4.3 percent in May from six percent in the same period last year. On the other hand, the underemployment rate improved to 11.7 percent from 14.5 percent in May last year, which is equivalent to one million fewer underemployed persons.

The government defines the unemployed to include all persons who are 15 years old and over, and are reported as without work and currently available for work and seeking work. It also covers those who are not seeking work due to being tired or the belief that no work is available, a temporary illness, bad weather and a decision to wait for a possible job rehire or recall.

Underemployed persons, meanwhile, are employed persons who have expressed the desire to have an additional hour of work in their present job or to have an additional job,

The latest figures indicate unemployment and underemployment hitting their second lowest rates since 2005, which should give our economic managers ample reason to believe they are putting in place the right policies and programs to further open up the economy.