You see, Reader, there is no such thing as “the price of rice in the world market”, as quoted above….PLUS, the latest FAO Rice Price Update came out on Sept. 8, one day after the Romualdez press release. It shows that the August rice price indices were higher compared to those in July, and even higher compared to August 2022:
And do you know, Reader, that in August. 2018, the average retail price of rice was P44.66. Yes. The price of rice 5 years ago was higher than the price of rice now, which has alarmed our government so much that they are calling for a price ceiling.
Real GDP growth rate for the 2nd Quarter 2023 has been estimated at 4.3% by the Philippine Statistics Authority. .This is much lower than anyone’s expectations.
Question: If judging BBM on the country’s economic growth versus the ASEAN 5 opens a can of worms, then how should he be judged?
Politics has reared its ugly head in the JBC, because, as an example, in the Duterte presidency, the short list of candidates presented to him seemed to very often have a San Bedan (his alma mater). The study shows that 40% of his appointees were Bedans, whereas the average for all the other presidents was only 10%.
The World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index 2022 is the basis of Inconvenient Truth #8: The Philippines has the lowest score, and the lowest rank, among the ASEAN-5 as far as the Rule of Law is concerned. What is so galling is that eight years ago, in 2015, the Philippines had a score (0.53) higher than everyone else, except Malaysia (0.57). As you can see, Reader, the Duterte administration really brought down the Philippines Rule of Law score and ranking – from 0.53 to 0.47, and from 51 out of 102 to 97th out of 140. . One would have hoped that the BBM would see those scores and ranks going up, but judging from what is happening in the de Lima case and what happened in the Remulla fils case, that gleam of hope is fading. In the Philippines, the rule by law still reigns supreme.
Weep, Reader, for the blighted future of our country’s current crop of 10-year-olds, with only one in ten of able to read and understand what she is reading.
Much has been made about the Philippine’s income inequality decreasing from 0.46 in 1997 to 0.41 in 2021. But this pales in comparison to Malaysia and Thailand’s performance: Malaysia from 0.49 to 0.39, and Indonesia from 0.48 to 0.34.
What these all suggest is that the quantity of economic growth experienced by the rest of Asean-5 was not only much larger, but also the developmental quality of that growth was better – more equally distributed.
[T]he success of the PDP requires not only the whole-of- government, but the whole-of-society as well. That means us, Reader. So if we are to really get into this, to do our thing for our country, so to speak, we must know exactly what we are up against, we must face some very unpleasant , inconvenient truths
The first piece of hard evidence is the assessment of the Philippine government itself on the justice situation in the PDP 2023-2028. It says, , “Despite… positive developments, several policy reforms and key legislations remain unattained, such as “Fragmentation of the criminal justice system remains a challenge”, “ Backlogs in resolving cases, delays caused by inefficient practices, and aging persist”, “ Limited resources weaken the justice sector,” and “Low public confidence in the justice system undermines the rule of law”, all expounded in the chapter.