People's pulse and the reset

VIRTUAL REALITY

- TONY LOPEZ

In the March 23-29, 2025 Pulse Asia survey of urgent national concerns, the most urgent cited by respondents were: 1) controlling inflation, 69 percent; 2) increasing pay of workers, 36 percent; 3) fighting graft and corruption in government, 28 percent; 4) fighting criminality, 28 percent and 5) reducing the poverty of Filipinos, 27 percent.

President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. got the highest disapproval ratings on these issues: 1) controlling inflation, 69 percent; 2) fighting graft and corruption, 53 percent and 3) fighting criminality, 49 percent, with increasing workers' pay and reducing poverty, both garnering 48 percent disapproval.

Put simply, the most urgent problems of Filipinos are: 1) high prices; 2) corruption and 3) criminality. And little is being done, so far, to address these issues — at the Cabinet and at the lower levels of government.

Wage earners want higher pay to cope with rising prices and to reduce their poverty. If you control inflation, you effectively increase the purchasing power of people. If you increase their purchasing power, you reduce poverty because poverty is the inability to buy your basic needs, especially food and medical care.

President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. probably did not have these issues in mind when he undertook a reset, a revamp, a repurposing (I did not say recycling) of his Cabinet. The people he removed from the Cabinet are those with no direct bearing on fighting inflation and criminality.

Fighting inflation is the job of his economic team. BBM (Bongbong Marcos) kept his economic team intact, including the secretaries of Finance (Ralph Recto), Economic Planning (Arsi Balisacan), Trade and Industry (Cris Roque) and Investments (Frederick Go).