The SONA and the defects in our eco-political system

I have grown increasingly frustrated by the President's failure to confront the country's core eco-political defects — the very defects that hinder our national development.

- ANDREW J. MASIGAN

In last Monday's SONA, the only significant reform I heard was the pledge to expose and arrest abusers of flood control funds. The rest were peripheral issues — important but far from transformative.

What eco-political defects am I referring to? With limited space, let me cite five.

First is the poor quality of political leadership. This is a result of the out-of-control proliferation of dynasties and the absence of meritocracy in our electoral system.

Poor leadership has given us a dysfunctional government. We see and feel it in the subpar delivery public services; in a legislature that prioritizes partisan politics and political survival over all else; in the inability to elevate the economy's competitiveness and in runaway corruption.

Poor leadership hijacks our national destiny — our future — and benefits only the entitled political elite. Despite this, electoral reform did not even figure in the President's SONA, let alone his core agenda.

The second defect is the country's inhospitable investment climate. The sheer difficulty and risk of doing business in the country is the reason we are unable to make that all-important shift to an investment-led economy.

Resolving the investment climate is complex. It demands sweeping reforms in the justice system to allow faster, corruption-free resolution of disputes, labor cases and insolvencies; accelerated digitization of government functions for efficient permit processing and tax compliance; stricter oversight of local governments to stop the harassment and extortion of investors and urgent action to close supply chain gaps.