By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
Anybody who grew up in this country knows how inefficient and corrupt government is. And also government controlled corporations.
When there was not much money to steal from government, the powers that be started maneuvering to sell the government corporations to raise funds. After all these were being ran inefficiently. To raise funds for what? A lot of reasons were always cited to justify such moves, but the bottom line was the processes were thought about for the powers that be to make money. Lots of money. For themselves or their friends and relatives who are members of the socio-economic and political elite.
Thinking about writing this, I googled to find out big companies which the government auctioned off to the private sector. I got dizzy due to the big number of such. These were big businesses that could have made the country and its individual citizens very rich.
But here we are, as poor as rats.
In the early stage of my career as a lawyer, I was one of the corporate counsels and the managers to take care of a sequestered land transportation company right after the Tita Cory revolution.
We were running it well, in a professional way. The company was starting to look healthy from the decades of abuse and incompetence by those related to the old powers that be who maneuvered to somehow own the company.
Then the sequestration which was good at first. But when the company started to look healthier which by the way used to be the biggest bus company in Southeast Asia—Pantranco—some friends of the appointees of Tita Cory got interested and they asserted control over it. That became the beginning of the end.
So we got demoralized and finally left. Things became so bad there it was ran to the ground, the government did not even get a cent for it.
At least we left early enough before it became hopefless to be later was pronounced dead on arrival.
Did the people responsible for its death become at least remorseful? No. They never even acted in a way to show they were sorry. Not to the people and to the government.
How about the trusted boys of Tita Cory? Nothing. Wala lang.
What a way to run a government or a country.
Multiply that case to hundreds or even thousands and you understand how this country became, and still, a basket case.
Do we see any serious effort among the national leadership to make it better? No, nothing. Wala lang.**
