The most crucial election in a long time

Tomorrow is the day many of us have been waiting for for a long time. Months and even years of posturing, campaigning, and strategizing have come to this. But this isn’t just any ordinary national election.

This election will be the most crucial one we have had in a long time. It’s certainly not because of the polarizing candidates --although that may also be a factor in the minds of some voters-- it’s more of what challenges the new president and his or her administration will face.

We are not talking about the usual internal issues like corruption, crime, and the drug problem which, sadly, seem to have become perennial. We are talking about unique ones like COVID-19 recovery, our mounting debt, China, and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

No one saw COVID-19 coming and how it would devastate our economy. Now we are slowly but surely picking up the pieces, although things are not exactly how they used to be post-pandemic. The next administration must make sure we can recoup our losses and come back from the slump during the lockdowns.

Our mounting national debt is another issue to deal with. An offshoot of the global pandemic, the next administration will not just have to find a way to finance this debt; it must take care not to make new ones in the process.

China is another issue. The next administration has to have better policies than this present one when it comes to asserting our sovereignty. As it stands right now China is threatening some kind of action if we proceed with exploring our own waters for resources like oil and natural gas without partnering with them. While those resources have the potential to make us rich --or at least self-reliant to a point energy-wise-- we don’t see partnering with China being beneficial to us at all.

Finally, the war in Ukraine. It is a war that threatens to expand beyond Ukraine and engulf other parts of Europe. Although it is a far stretch to say that the violence will never spill over to this part of the world, we are feeling its effects in the terms of fuel prices and a looming food shortage. It is also a war that may play out for some time or have far-reaching consequences even after it is over.

We are sure there are other issues at play. But failure to properly address or deal with the issues mentioned above will result in even more problems for the Philippines.