Rody takes a bow

So are you better off today than you were six years ago? This is one gauge of the performance of a president and his administration.

On the individual level, of course the big winners in this year’s elections will say they are so much better off today than in 2016. And the reverse goes for most of the losers. We now have 10-year driver’s license and passport. The military and police are surely happy about their new equipment, higher pay and pensions.

On the other hand, bereaved loved ones and friends of the 6,241 drug suspects killed (from July 2016 until endMarch 2022) will see the past six years as a nightmare. Those who lost their jobs with the shutdown of ABS-CBN will also likely not feel they are better off today.

The assessment is more complicated at the national level, because several major developments emanating from overseas wreaked havoc on accomplishment targets.

COVID-19 continues to threaten public health, putting a drag on economic recovery. And now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not only compounding the economic catastrophe spawned by the pandemic but also creating a global food crisis that inevitably will worsen poverty.

President Duterte’s embrace of all things Chinese because of his resentment of Uncle Sam brought COVID early to our shores, with the first two patients and first death straight from Ground Zero, China’s Wuhan City.

Instead of taking his cue from the early responses of places such as Taiwan, Vietnam and New Zealand, Duterte went for China’s COVID-zero policy – without the enormous quarantine, free mass testing and efficient contacttracing capabilities of the world’s second largest economy.

Metro Manila and then the entire Luzon were locked down, followed shortly by nearly the entire country, putting the Philippines on the path to its worst economic contraction since World War II and eventually burying Filipinos in P12.76-trillion debt.

* * * A preference for Chinese vaccines, and expectations of free jabs from Uncle Xi also led to the initial rejection of a Washington-facilitated priority procurement of 10 million doses of prized Pfizer jabs that would have been delivered in January last year. Those 10 million jabs could have saved five million lives and brought down the death toll during the Alpha-driven killer surge that began in late March.

The government likes to compare the country’s COVID cases and death toll with those of the worst-hit led by the United States. Unlike the Philippines, however, the US did not go for a zero-COVID policy. Americans resisted lockdowns and even masking, vaccine hesitancy has always been high, and in-person classes were only briefly interrupted.

Economic analysts have said the Philippines will be the regional laggard in pandemic recovery. The fuel crisis has aggravated the problem.

President Duterte enacted laws providing universal health care, free or subsidized mental health and HIV/ AIDS services, and universal free education from kindergarten to the tertiary level.

The programs, however, were so ambitious that even before the pandemic, funding was so insufficient that the universal health care could only be rolled out over several years.

Funding requirements for free education also surged while the quality of learning, by nearly all accounts, deteriorated as the pandemic forced the country to resort to distance learning.

The private sector pitched in for the gadget requirements of underprivileged students and even teachers, but the supplies still weren’t enough especially for poor families with two or more school-age children.

* * * Delivering on his promise, Duterte signed laws to cut red tape and improve ease of doing business. But we’re still trailing the other major Southeast Asian economies in terms of ease of doing business, competitiveness, and happiness as measured by quality of life indicators.

We’re also trailing in transparency for good governance. Duterte, whose Executive Order No. 2 provided public access to information, is the first president to stop releasing his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth, since the enactment in 1989 of the law on the public disclosure of SALNs.

Among the most tangible accomplishments of the outgoing administration are the new roads, bridges and airports built in the past six years.

Another peace agreement was forged, this time with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Duterte failed to realize his campaign pitch for federalism, but he created the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. The siege of Marawi, however, showed how fragile peace can be in the BARMM.

Boracay was cleaned up, and the rehabilitation is holding up … so far. Opinion is divided on the dolomite beach in Manila, now featuring a tacky replica of a cannon and a new administrative building that violates coastal easement rules applied elsewhere in the country.

Bad memories and broken promises tend to be more indelible. Apart from the deaths from Tokhang and COVID, people remember the statement about taking a jet ski to the Spratlys to stake the country’s claim. Joke only, Duterte has said; now he hopes to hitch a ride with the Coast Guard on patrol in the West Philippine Sea.

* * * Duterte put the anti-corruption campaign right up there with his war on drugs in terms of priority. What we’ve had are the Pharmally mess and now agricultural smuggling. He now considers corruption as seemingly intractable as the drug scourge.

People won’t miss his slurred stream-of-consciousness public briefings laced with expletives, insults and sexist jokes, aired at ungodly hours. In this area, the incoming president is clearly a refreshing change.

As I have noted previously, however, the personal style, including the short cuts to law enforcement and his brand of swift justice, are precisely part of Duterte’s grassroots appeal.

For all his shortcomings, Rodrigo Duterte can take pride in his continuing popularity, which shut out the opposition in 2019 and again this year. He can take a bow as he steps down with the highest approval and trust ratings among the post-EDSA presidents.

The tandem associated with continuity of his administration won by the biggest margin ever last May. And the woman who carries the Duterte surname garnered even more votes than the president-elect.

Tomorrow we start the continuity, for better or worse.