Unlucky country: Lethargic leadership during crisis

AS dreadful as the adverse impact on our nation of corruption on a gargantuan scale — dirty money in suitcases — is the utter incompetence in governance of this regime. We will be suffering from it if the US-Israeli war against Iran escalates.

I certainly hope US President Trump — after talking to Russian leader Putin — was telling the truth when he said just the other day that the American-Israeli war vs Iran will end “very soon.” Even as the shock wave of that war — mainly through oil prices — hasn’t really hit us yet, our supposed leader has demonstrated that he just lacks the mettle and the fire-in-the-belly to lead nation through a crisis.

Probably fed up with the pressure to address the coming crisis, President Marcos Jr. with his wife flew the other day to New York, purportedly because he needed to address the yearly meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and to lobby for the Philippines to get a seat in the United Nations Security Council for 2027-2028. Those are flimsy excuses for another New York junket. He should have used, as netizens cried out in social media, the over P100 million he is spending for his trip to evacuate our OFWs in the Middle East.

The CSW is attended usually only by nations’ ministers for women or social affairs, rarely by heads of state. In this CSW, the only other heads of states who joined Marcos (but who didn’t deliver an address) were Rwanda’s Paul Kagama, Hage Geingob of Namibia, and Giorgia Meloni, the first female prime minister of Italy.

Marcos was obviously on an ego trip, an expensive one paid for by taxpayers: His propaganda machinery disseminated photos of him, with that iconic green background of the venue of UN General Assembly meetings.

Excuse

Marcos’ second excuse is a big lie. Who would he talk to in the UN headquarters to convince them to vote for the Philippines to be a member of the Security Council? Ambassadors who are told what to do by their headquarters or their leaders back home? Such decisions are made by countries’ foreign ministers and even heads of state, and really, through a circuitous, covert route, by the superpower permanent members of the Security Council — the US, Russia, China, France and the UK.

This is another karma thing for Marcos’ juvenile belligerent policy against China. That superpower would most definitely lobby, albeit quietly, to block the US puppet nation’s getting a seat at the Council.

Marcos, I would guess, probably got a belated order from Washington for the country to make a bid for a seat in the council: The frontrunner is Kyrgyzstan, a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, supported by China and Russia. Kyrgyzstan is lobbying to be the first Central Asian state to be a member of that council. The Philippines has been elected as a member four times; the last was in 2004 to 2005, an Arroyo accomplishment.

Wars in the Middle East have historically triggered spikes in global oil prices, disruptions in shipping routes and tremors in financial markets. For a country like the Philippines — heavily dependent on imported fuel and deeply tied to overseas employment in the region — the risks are obvious.

Yet the response of the Marcos administration, astonishingly, has been lethargic. Instead of a sense of urgency, one sees bureaucratic platitudes about “monitoring the situation,” suggestions that government offices conserve electricity, and vague talk about possible tax adjustments if fuel prices rise further. This is not crisis management. It is complacency.

The first and most immediate threat lies in energy. The Philippines imports roughly 90 percent of its oil requirements, much of which ultimately originates in or passes through the Middle East. Any disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow channel through which about a fifth of the world’s oil supply flows — would quickly translate into soaring fuel prices at Philippine pumps.

Yet the government’s most visible response so far has been to advise government offices to reduce electricity consumption, adjust air-conditioning temperatures, and experiment with a four-day work week.

These are the kinds of measures taken during routine price fluctuations. They are absurdly inadequate in the face of a potential geopolitical shock that could rattle the entire global energy market.

Leadership

The real problem is not simply the absence of decisive policy. It is the absence of leadership. To see what leadership looks like in a crisis, one need only recall how previous Philippine presidents reacted when confronted with systemic shocks.

During the global financial meltdown of 2008-2009, the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo moved quickly to blunt the impact of the recession. Her administration launched the Economic Resiliency Plan, a massive fiscal stimulus worth hundreds of billions of pesos. Infrastructure spending was accelerated, social programs expanded, and government financial institutions mobilized to keep credit flowing through the economy.

But equally important was how the government projected command of the situation. Arroyo convened repeated emergency meetings of the economic cluster and cabinet task forces. These meetings were often televised or publicly announced, with the president flanked by her economic managers explaining the measures being taken. The message was unmistakable: the government was on top of the crisis and had a plan.

A decade later another crisis erupted, this time in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic. When the virus swept across the world in 2020, the administration of Rodrigo Duterte did not pretend the country could simply wait it out.

Duterte established the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) and convened frequent cabinet meetings to coordinate the national response. These sessions were regularly broadcast live or covered extensively by the media, with officials announcing new policies, restrictions and assistance programs.

The policies were controversial, sometimes heavy-handed, and frequently criticized. But one thing could not be denied: the government was visibly engaged in managing the crisis. The televised briefings and task force meetings signaled to the public that the state was mobilizing itself against the emergency.

Glaring

The contrast with the present situation could hardly be more glaring.

Officials today just keep saying don’t worry, the country has 50 to 60 days of oil supply in reserve and that economic managers are “closely monitoring developments.” Monitoring, however, is not policy. It is simply waiting for events to unfold.

The potential fallout extends far beyond gasoline prices. Millions of overseas Filipino workers live and work across the Middle East. Their remittances are a lifeline for the Philippine economy. If the conflict expands — something that cannot be ruled out — evacuations could disrupt remittance flows and send thousands of workers back home.

Where is the contingency plan for that scenario?

Where are the emergency cabinet meetings? Where is the presidential task force coordinating the national response? Where are the public briefings explaining to Filipinos how the government intends to navigate a potential oil shock?

So far, there has been none of that. Rather it’s been what Marcos’ officials in private claim is his usual marching order: “Bahala na kayo.”

For a president already known for his enthusiasm for foreign travel, the optics were unmistakable when he left for New York. Instead of convening emergency consultations with energy officials, coordinating contingency plans for OFWs, and preparing the public for rising fuel prices, the president was giving speeches in New York.

History shows how dangerous such shocks can be. Oil crises have repeatedly triggered inflation spikes, currency depreciation, and economic turmoil in oil-dependent developing countries. The Philippines is particularly vulnerable because of its heavy reliance on imported fuel and overseas remittances.

One might therefore expect the government to be aggressively preparing for worst-case scenarios: securing alternative energy supplies, expanding strategic petroleum reserves, coordinating with Asean partners, establishing fiscal buffers to cushion the impact of rising fuel prices; determining (and lobbying for) the lifting of the excise tax on petroleum products.

Instead, the administration’s most visible policy response has been to tell government employees to conserve electricity while the president travels abroad, and for certain government agencies to be open only four days a week.

Leadership in times of crisis requires something very different. It requires urgency, foresight and the willingness to confront uncomfortable realities.

At the moment, the Marcos administration appears to be relying on something else entirely: the hope that the crisis will somehow resolve itself before it reaches Philippine shores. And governments that substitute hope for preparation usually discover their mistake only when the crisis has already arrived.

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Unlucky country: Lethargic leadership during crisis
Source: Breaking News PH