GRPundit

Looking at it from a ground perspective, whenever I look around I see a lot of construction projects going on, giving a false impression that the country is prospering. However most of the construction boom are real estate projects – hotels, condominiums, house and lot, and commercial areas – malls, supermarkets, convenience stores, and so on. But this sort of growth is unsustainable. You can only have so much real estate to meet the demand. What happens when that demand dries up? What happens when people are unable to pay their mortgages? Remittances can't remain constant forever. There would be a lot of empty houses and condos, construction will stop, the economy will contract and there'd be a lot more jobless and homeless people. This will to unrest, and at the worst, upheaval. You don't base an entire economy that creates little and relies on remittances to fund consumer demand for goods made elsewhere. Not to mention the fact that so many people are employed in t...

There are better barometers to measuring the economic health of a country than GDP figures alone. The problem with GDP is that it does not measure income inequality, income distribution, economic sustainability, poverty incidence, education, health, employment and standard of living. What benefit does GDP growth provide if most of that economic growth is enjoyed by the richest 10% of the population, and if most of that growth is centered on unsustainable ventures like real estate and consumerism funded by OFW remittances? The country barely makes anything, barely exploits its natural resources and has weak manufacturing, on top of a degrading infrastructure, increasing crime, environmental degradation, and lack of innovation due in part to the brain drain (per net emigration). There's the country's per capita income (both nominal and PPP) which, when compared to overall global rankings the Philippines places 124th and 130th respectively. This is GDP divided by a country...

Rule of law in Indonesia is evident in the way its leaders defer to their Constitutional Court acting as the authoritative arbiter in deciding who won the presidential elections recently held there... "The Constitutional Court was hearing an appeal by the losing presidential candidate, a former army general and son-in-law of Indonesia's former dictator, who charged that the election last July had been rigged and should be overturned. "Outside, his supporters clashed with the riot police and tried to storm the court building. The police fired water cannons and tear gas. "But when the justices issued their ruling denying the appeal last month, something strange happened: The losing candidate grudgingly accepted defeat." Something yet to happen in the Philippines, the Pikon Nation. (See the complete NYT article here: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/world/asia/in-southeast-asia-indonesia-becomes-a-role-model-for-democracy.html ) Joko Widodo,...

What has our elected president ever done to compete?? His mom died. That is the why the country voted for him. We deserve to do lousy in international competition because in the eyes of Pinoys Noynoy, The Binays, the Erap family, the Marcos family are all winners. So in truth we are losers. We can not compete because we don't appreciate people who can. It is about having the right name, the right family and not the right skill. That is the pinoy way and will be the pinoy way for a long time to come. Self entitled. "Oh your mom died, you have my vote". That attitude may be fine locally but get a country of people who worship the Aquinos and the Estradas all playing basketball and it can't even get significant international wins against other countries whose best athletes play football, baseball and get Olympic medals. ----------------- This is a GRP Featured Comment. Join the discussion! http://getrealphilippines.com/blog/2014/09/continued-loss-suffer...

It has a lot to do with advertising. If you compare the amount of advertising between basketball and another sport, there will always be a huge disparity. This is why sponsors are more willing to lend their support to basketball because there is a higher number of audience for their benefit. This, in turn, creates a problem for other sports in need of funding from private enterprises. It isn't because private investors don't want to support other sports but simply it won't have a return invest on their end. This is why government support is necessary. I believe basketball can be left onto private entities while sports such as boxing, taekwondo, dragon boat racing, and the like can be assisted by government funding. The other thing we can do in the long term is to create more variety in our local sports culture. In the US, many kids aged 15-19 play as many as five sports because their fitness and athleticism (developed from an early age) allows them to be flexible. In ...

Agreed on all your points but you need to cut our basketball team some slack. I don't know if you did some background check but our basketball affairs have been wrought with terrible leadership and corruption beginning as far back in the 70′s and grew at its peak around the 90′s. When the country placed 15th out of 16 teams in the 2003 Asian Championships, that was when the Philippine olympic committee decided it was no longer going to tolerate the mismanagement of the Basketball Association of the Philippines (BAP). The formation of the Samahang Basketball ng Pilipinas (SBP) in 2007 was pretty much the rebirth of Filipino basketball in international competitions. We went from 9th place to 2nd place in the Asian championships and eventually succeeded in 1 of 2 goals that is to participate in the World Cup (I hope we can qualifiy in the Olympics). The point I'm trying to make is that our basketball team can be competitive if we continue our NT programs with some improvemen...

OFWs as heroes my ass. I have heard countless testimonials from OFWs who have been thoroughly harassed, abused and inconvenienced whenever they're back home in the Philippines. Call them heroes while treating them like crap. What's worse, OFWs have little to no political clout in their home country. They should have at least some say in the way things are being run in their home country, because after all they're the biggest sponsors of the palamunins back home, while the phrase "OFWs are heroes" are constantly being used in every propaganda piece. There's an extraordinary amount of self-delusion and hypocrisy going on in the Philippines, moreso than in any other country, more than I daresay Republican America or Putin's Russia. At least they have something real and concrete to brag about, to be proud of. In this country the word pride and achievement is as hollow as the next popular fad craze that they happen to see and mimic on social media or ...