CAN holidays and New Year’s Day be any more traumatic? Everything is possible.
Filipinos in general apply two principles of poor decision-making: One is poor planning; the other is the recently dubbed FAFO, or F** k Around and Find Out. This amazing and accurate principle of idiocy that we often experience in our country means to inflict damage on yourself by not studying the effects and past experiences of what you want to do — even when lessons abound everywhere — then suffer the consequences, then repeat (But remain loving and lovable).
Type 1 on poor planning — a current manifestation is the sudden evening declaration of holiday, which disrupts life and costs small businesses and wage workers. Banks will not be accessible for cash to pay weekly-paid workers in contractual work, so they cannot afford to go home. Some workers will not come in even with holiday pay. Exports are heavily penalized for delays, even by a day, and deliveries will fail to replenish stock, so lose weekend sales, or are forced to be delayed for a full week or two due to receiving schedules, therefore investments have lower yields.
A “traumatic New Year’s Day” was 2023 … for our visitors, tourists and businesspeople. Not having the maintenance or parts for the radar system is one thing, horrifying already as it is, the purchase of a backup system without checking if received or installed or being tested, are other typical management weaknesses in the country.
We do have some highly competent people and companies, but a class or country is not judged by the exceptions in the group but by the average or mean performance, plus adaptability. We do have high-performance processing efficiency agencies, but they are the minority.
Without specifying the government agencies, many computer information systems have even less functions than before and take longer to work. Simple information on companies is now harder to obtain than a few years ago, which was obtainable online, and is now available only in less granular forms and costing more, using more unnecessary printouts, i.e., far less environmental.
The National ID can already be very useful, but it has no function or accessibility yet (aside from the horrible pictures taken, and the lack of integration of types of information taken).
We should allow the proper operationalized integration of different branches of government with the DICT, get the best consultants and stakeholders’ discussion for design, and negotiations or “bids” should include some of our public-spirited, performance-proven, rather than just academic, experts. There are judgment calls, but to make errors on basic fundamentals reveals either corruption or our low learning and planning ability … as a nation.
“Public Information” systems, e.g., for land or other regulatory bodies, are often inaccessible, often deliberately, by semi-autonomous chiefs. Software systems may not be applying even the simple digital productivity tools for inter accessibility instead of repeat documentation requiring physical presence or documents and added costs … and this applies to many agencies. This is also often deliberate to hide or confuse information, or charge more even when new processes actually require fewer steps and people, and cost less.
While Filipinos are a digital-savvy population, at least from the point of usage hours and transactions, clearly a massively skewed majority of our countrymen, compared to other countries’ citizens, are using digital apps for socializing and entertainment rather than productivity and learning or economic systems.
We don’t even have systems for lining up for rides, or labeling directions for products or transport systems, routes. For decades, our vaunted national university prided itself in being egalitarian by making students line up early and having a chaotic system of enrollment.
Type 2, FAFO means F**k Around and Find Out. The costliest way to learn reality: ignore past lessons.
Learning through pain
A current example is Ukraine, which only had to agree to not allow NATO to post weapons systems on its grounds that could be used against Russia, to have peace instead of some 150,000 dead and missing by information a few months ago (per European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and Kyiv information). Russia’s decades of courtship and warnings were ignored.
Another example to learn from, or to “find out again” what can happen, is related to the signed Minsk agreements, not one but two, by Ukraine, Germany and France and Russia, to allow autonomy to the Donbas region. But Zelenskyy allowed UK’s Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden, the 2 B’s, to convince him to cancel the peace treaty about to be concluded in April 2022 in Istanbul. They F’d around the contracts and warnings, now they have lost 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory.
The Philippine policymakers in foreign affairs and defense see this, but nevertheless offering, without being asked, to put us in the crosshairs of an oncoming battle between US and China over Taiwan, possibly nuclear or robotic, which is not necessary, and where we have no competency in, and will gain no net benefit from … Sabah meanwhile, which is contractually clearly ours by any practical consideration, they just let the US and the UK give away without a whimper.
Did we learn?
The US and the EU lied to Russia (admitted now by former German chancellor Merkel) from the very beginning about the contract they signed of the Minsk agreement, never intending to follow it, and Ukrainians are now dying in the hundreds of thousands, with a third of people migrated.
The US lied, now admitted and proven, on the Iraq weapons of mass destruction and then again for the support for al-Qaida, the threats from Libya, or the Afghan Talibans’ defeat.
Lessons in US loyalty? From the EU suffering collapses in industries and high costs for their people, just to ally with US interests, then the US courted EU industries to relocate to the US, and sold energy at four times the price, profiting from EU sufferings in the hundreds of billions. While courting France to be a military ally, the US suddenly intercepted signed contracts with Australia for over $65 billion of submarines. All reputable analysts not on US payroll agree now it was the US that blew up US ally, Germany’s lifeline to energy and industrial might, the Nord Stream 2.
Learn from the “level playing field” and “rule of law,” the US preaches? When the Russians being accused by the US suggested that an investigation should be conducted of Nord Stream 2, the Russians were not allowed to be part of the investigators, and no non-US-aligned observers were allowed to even observe the investigations. When the US accused Huawei of lying to HSBC regarding contract payments, the US prosecution and Canada judge refused to accept email evidence that was already proven genuine, that Huawei was transparent and the US fabricated the charges.
Learn from Sweden, Denmark and Germany refusing to give the outcomes of the investigation “for national security reasons”? Do they fear the US that much? From the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN refusing to publish for weeks already the conduct and outcomes of the investigations of the countries or findings of legendary reporter Seymour Hersh?
We have seen how the US lied for 20 years about victory and progress in Afghanistan, a hoax, and their leaving without informing their allies or the people abandoned in Afghanistan.
There is even a transcript showing Biden asking Ashraf Ghani to lie to the public about how well their operations were going, when the Afghan president was pleading already that the Taliban were about to overrun the capital.
We already experienced the casualness of American commitment in their betraying the Philippines independence movement by taking over, in their canceling the promised benefits by the US president to Filipinos who fought and died for the US government in WW2, where more than a million Filipinos died. … Did more Filipinos or Americans (about 400,000) die in WW2? Was the Philippines given more assistance, or the aggressor Japan?
Unfortunately, when corrupt or idiotic governments FAFO, they F**k around, but it’s the ordinary people who “find out” and pay the price!
Wise up, don’t add US bases, we should apply instead, FOFA ! That is, find out before you f**k around!
We welcome logical feedback and possibly working together with compatible frameworks (idsicenter@gmail.com). A similar version was also published in ManilaTimes.