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EDILBERTO C. DE JESUS

Business Matters: Public well-being for public security

March 14, 2020

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, as it was sweeping across 100 countries in six continents, infecting more than 120,000 and killing over 4,300 people. With commendable speed, President Duterte, surrounded by Cabinet, civilian, and police/military officials, announced over television on March 12 the intent of an executive order to deal with COVID-19. Although unnecessarily detouring to praise Xi Jinping, implicitly shading other world leaders, Mr. Duterte pitched some important messages. He stressed the seriousness of the pandemic but cautioned against panic and urged the public to look at the government and the military as dedicated to its safety. He appeared more in command, compared to an earlier press conference and the alarming incoherence of a rambling discourse on the bubonic plague, the Spanish flu, and the Spanish Inquisition's attack on witches.

CIELITO F. HABITO

No Free Lunch: More basic than cell phones

March 13, 2020

Nearly nine in every 10 Filipino families (87 percent) own a cellular phone, and yet only three in every four (74 percent) have their own sanitary toilet, Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data tell us. Among the poorest 30 percent of families alone, barely over half have their own sanitary toilet, even as nearly eight in every 10 own a cell phone. At this time when a public health emergency seriously threatens lives and livelihoods, we ought to be going back to the basics and worry about our people's access to basic sanitation.

CIELITO F. HABITO

No Free Lunch: Men and machines

March 10, 2020

In January 2012, the Labor Force Survey counted 12.190 million employed Filipino agricultural workers. In January 2019, there were only 8.847 million. Within that seven-year period, the number had gone down successively to 11.049 million in January 2015, and 10.034 million in January 2017. There was, in short, a steady decline in agricultural workers in the country over the past seven years or so. If you've heard it said that people don't want to work in the farms anymore, there's the clear proof.

RONALD U. MENDOZA, EMERALD JAY ILAC, ARIZA FRANCISCO AND JELO MICHAEL S. CASILAO

Diagnosing Factors behind Officers' Performance in the Philippine National Police

March 10, 2020

The Philippine National Police (PNP) faces myriad challenges, spanning governance, corruption and national security threats. Hence, securing a strong leadership pipeline equipped not only to face these challenges, but also to strengthen policing effectiveness and over-all security sector reforms is crucial. This study aims to map out some of the main factors that both build or erode key leadership qualities and performance in the PNP. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, the study examines four main factors, namely personality traits, organizational culture, demographic profile and professional history, as predictor of performance for officers in the National Capital Region.

RONALD U. MENDOZA AND ARIZA T. FRANCISCO

Restoring trust in our 'Nation's Finest'

March 10, 2020

In his oathtaking as the 23rd chief of the Philippine National Police, Gen. Archie Gamboa, a lawyer, addressed his over 200,000-strong organization with the following challenge: "Simulan muna natin ang pagbabago sa ating mga sarili. We cannot implement the rule of law if we ourselves violate the law."

EDILBERTO C. DE JESUS

Business Matters: Calamities and democracies

March 07, 2020

No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy." Amartya Sen's comment and the criticism it received from some academics apparently made little impact on the panel that awarded him the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1998 for his work on poverty, gender inequality, and the UN's Human Development Index. But it was this observation that caught the attention and assent of public intellectuals and the general public.

CIELITO F. HABITO

No Free Lunch: Where have all the workers gone?

March 06, 2020

It's not easy anymore to find workers for our farm operations," I've been hearing many farmers tell me lately. I'm making the rounds again talking to various farmers in different parts of the country in the course of a research study. Whether they are tilling less than a hectare or operating hundreds of hectares of consolidated farms, a persistent clamor our research team keeps hearing is for easier access to farm machinery, because farmworkers are getting hard to find or costly to hire.

RONALD U. MENDOZA, SHEENA VALENZUELA AND MANUEL DAYRIT

A Crisis of Confidence: The Case of Dengvaxia in the Philippines

March 04, 2020

At the time of publishing this case, a "health crisis of confidence" was gripping the Dengvaxia (dengue vaccine) immunization program in the Philippines. The series of events that led to this could be traced back at least to late 2017, when some government officials under the then newly installed Duterte administration along with a group of stakeholders began to publicly raise issues as to the health impact of the vaccine - with some raising alarms in media that the vaccine directly led to the deaths of children. This case tackles the governance issues surrounding this program, emphasizing the important role of public communication. As there indeed were governance issues surrounding a vaccine program, how best to address them given the potential public health implications? The primary sources of information for this case are key informant interviews with former officials of the Department of Health (DOH).

CIELITO F. HABITO

No Free Lunch: Worsening virus prospects

March 03, 2020

In the less than four weeks since I first wrote about the COVID-19 virus ("The bigger virus damage," 2/7/20), confirmed cases worldwide have multiplied three and a half times as of this writing - that is, to 85,403 from 24,643 last month. What alarms many is that confirmed cases outside China have jumped nearly 25 times (from 243 to 6, 009), and now in nearly 60 countries, twice the 28 a month ago. Deaths from the illness have multiplied nearly six times, from 493 to 2,924. The numbers imply an average mortality rate of 3.4 percent worldwide, higher within China (3.5 percent) but much less outside of China so far (1.4 percent), although Iran records an alarming 7-percent death rate.

CIELITO F. HABITO

No Free Lunch: Examining Filipinos' happiness

February 28, 2020

I recently wrote about gross national happiness (GNH) and how it is now measured, noting that contrary to what many of us would probably expect, the Philippines is nowhere near the top of the list of happiest countries in the world. In the United Nations' World Happiness Report 2019, we rank 69th in a list of 156 countries, or just above the middle in the list. Still, we rank higher (thus happier) than most of our Southeast Asian neighbors like Malaysia (80th), Indonesia (92nd), Vietnam (94th), Laos (105th), Cambodia (109th), and Myanmar (131st). Singapore (34th) and Thailand (52nd) are our only Asean neighbors that outrank us in the Happiness Index (Brunei is not included in the UN listing). Bhutan, for all its pioneering of the GNH concept, is actually only 92nd in the list, well below halfway in the list. However, we are among the top (12th) countries with the greatest improvement in the Happiness Index between the 2005-2008 and 2016-2018 periods. In the index that measures happiness on a scale of 0 to 10, the Philippines gained 0.860, that is, from 4.771 to 5.631. The biggest improvement in happiness came in Benin (which improved by 1.390) and Nicaragua (by 1.264), while the worst decline in happiness was seen in Venezuela (whose index dropped by 1.944), followed Syria (by 1.861).