A thousand days

VIRTUAL REALITY

- TONY LOPEZ

On Thursday, March 27, 2025, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Romualdez Marcos Jr. quietly marked his 1,000th day in office as president of the Philippines.

The milestone was celebrated with a remarkable lack of frill and flourish. The Department of Housing put out a press release of President BBM visiting a high-rise housing in Bocaue, Bulacan.

In his first State of the Nation Address, BBM promised to build six million homes in six years, or one million units per year. It was an outlandish pledge, matched only by his campaign pledge of a P20 kilo rice. Alas, both promises cannot be fulfilled. The entire housing industry can deliver only 200,000 units a year. The cost of rice when you buy it at the farm is already P20 per kilo. Bad roads, bad logistics and bad speculators bring that up to a minimum of P50 at retail. So now Agriculture Secretary Francis Tiu Laurel targets a more realistic retail price of P45 per kilo.

In America, the first 1,000 days of the presidency were immortalized in a book by Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who wrote the prize-winning "A Thousand Days" of President John F. Kennedy.

Said