By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
It was a lazy mid-afternoon the other day. My wife fetched me at the dialysis center although I could have gone back to the office on my own. At any rate, since it was early and there was a girl minding the office, I asked my wife if she had money for a bottled water and a donut. Certainly, she had some coins. So I said, can we walk to the coffee shop at the gas station across the road for some merienda? So, we did.
At the coffee shop, she then asked me why the sudden desire for having some merienda at the coffee shop? I said, several decades ago when I was Metro Manila based, I was practically spending half my life in coffee shops having all sorts of meetings with all sorts of people. Such meetings got reduced when I relocated to Baguio but I still missed the times sitting in a coffee shop looking at the world outside through its fixed glass wall or door.
My time in such environment even further got reduced when the health issues forced me to spend a lot of time in the dialysis center or in some facility for some medical procedure. Well, am relatively OK now but once in a while, I missed the days of staring at the outside through a fixed glass wall or window.
Then, as we were munching on donuts, my wife thought about going to buy some fruits next door. Go ahead, I said, as I continued watching the cars being filled up. Then a a Hyundai car came to gas up. It reminded me of Bob Lutz and the good things he said about Hyundai and other Korean cars. Anyway, Bob Lutz once headed or occupied senior executive positions in the biggest car companies in the world like General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and BMW. It was during his stint in BMW that the company came up with “the ultimate driving machine” to describe its cars.
Then of late, I chanced upon a relatively new car magazine from my files where Bob Lutz said that some of the best cars now are the Korean cars. Fine. How about Philippine cars. Nothing. What’s wrong with us? Why are we lagging behind in in all industries like the car industry?
Well, there are so many reasons like lack of government support but all these may be summed up by the following reality. When a new set of government officials are elected, their priority is to find a way for the government to have a lot of money so they will have something to steal. The easiest way to do that is to borrow from lending institutions or to sell government assets. Never mind if in the long run, it will be bad for the economy and for the people.
But we have run out of space so we will continue next issue.
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