Worth doing badly
AS a manager I lived by the slogan “Do it right the first time.” My job was to maximize profits with minimal risk. Risk-taking is the exclusive turf of the entrepreneur-owner.
Bautista’s ‘motives’
THE claim by the wife of Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Andres Bautista that he has undisclosed assets amounting to around P1 billion is shocking.
In an earlier life, I went with “Whatever is worth doing is worth doing badly.” I found it more helpful to my parishioners if I did everything worth doing with them even if at first I could only do it badly. I told myself I could always improve as I went along. I usually did. Now as a columnist I am back down with this earlier slogan.
Since government’s business is social services, it should do whatever is worth doing for the people even if badly at the start. With a modicum of sincerity things can always improve. With citizen support they usually do.
The war against drugs tops the list of what is worth doing even badly at first. Government, of course, must take all valid criticisms seriously. But I have to disagree with the politicallymotivated implied conclusion that it should be stopped or that the president should be ousted because of alleged extrajudicial deaths.
By all means these killings must stop but we cannot not do anything about a drug menace that has reached shocking proportions.
Fighting corruption is worth doing badly. The previous administration did it badly but should be credited for trying and at the very least showing this administration how to do it less badly.
The reproductive health law is another thing worth doing. We still have to see though if it’s going to be done badly as the bishops and their pro-birth friends would have us believe.
The latest thing worth doing is free tertiary education in state universities and colleges. I can think of many ways the new law can go badly but I’d rather they are taken care of in the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) or that government improves it along the way. Education is one proven way out of poverty. Better education means better jobs here and abroad.
Still not everybody, not even the most talented, is meant to go to college. I hope the IRR provides for aptitude-test screening so we don’t have people crowding state tertiary schools just because they are free.
Also, although the law socializes tertiary education it nevertheless should stipulate that only deserving (still for strict definition) students should be admitted.
Moreover, free tertiary education should not be at the expense of universal basic (elementary and high school) education. The latter should remain as a higher priority over the former.
Government cannot wait to act until it can do it right the first time only to end up doing nothing. The polls show that the majority (those excluded by an elitist system) approves of it acting on whatever is worth doing even badly.