Crunch Time

With the soaring oil and food prices, the world faces a grim reality that would ultimately bring more problems in years to come. Underdeveloped countries will likely suffer the brunt of the ever changing world of which its economy, political and social concern will deteriorate inexcusably.

Social unrest would become more prevalent and will intensify in poorer nations because hunger and poverty and the luck of employment opportunities take toll on the people’s lives and existence. For the poor nations, the current world situation is very difficult to address the basic needs of its citizens.

But others like the Philippines, who had been gallivanting and complacent for the past decades, is trying to stem the tide of the current crisis besetting all nations. The present government, who copied the corrupt ways and means of the Marcos dictatorship, has been busy charting their plan of actions to come up with a photo finish in crunch time.

Well, in sport, crunch time is the most exciting part of the game. Teams are looking up to their best players to do the trick and win the game in an exciting fashion. Whereas, the Philippine government is all but advocating unclear policy of band-aide solutions to the country’s problems just to beat the crunch time of imminent economic collapse.

The citizens have grown weary of all the promises that the government failed to address. And now that the soaring oil and food prices has greatly affected the Philippines, all the officials can do is to conduct food and energy summits with no positive results in sight.

They promised to release billions of pesos to subsidize electricity bills of poor city dwellers and for fertilizers for farmers in the countryside. Here, the people in the know suspect that the true beneficiaries will be left empty handed, again. The ghost of fertilizer fund scum used in 2004 Presidential Election is still fresh in the minds of the public.

Thus, the country, headed by the President herself, won’t be able to bring the citizens out of the crisis because the government is not a good player to deliver a convincing (economic stability) win in crunch time.