Philippines is a third-world country. And being a third-world country, we have obviously corrupt government officials, as they say. We experience economic crisis, we have a very unstable economy.
When people talk about the “Philippines”, people tend to refer only to the Philippine government, the president, and the ‘famous’ government officials. This has always been a misconception since talking about the “Philippines” is everything that could be found in the country, the people, the culture, everything.
Poverty is the deprivation of people to their wants, and sometimes even their needs. People consider themselves poor if they had very little education or even no education at all, if they are unemployed, and if they live in a house made of cardboards and live in the streets. Some also consider themselves poor when they cannot fulfill their wants.
Many factors are considered to contribute to the increasing rate of poverty in the country, warfare, decreasing quality of education, corrupt politicians, politicians having no political will, and of course, rapid increase of population.
Poverty has been a favorite topic of people who are planning to enter politics, since majority of the voters come from the poor. The poor and even the middle-class also often talk about this. And when they do, they tend to blame the government, especially the president for everything. Those people who plan to enter the game of politics always use the poor, which is obviously majority of the population in our country as their machinery. They often offer brides and buy the votes of the poor.
The poor, as they say, have a thinking vote. But based on my observation during elections, their hearts and their minds dissolve. They forgot of what they’re fighting for. The poor seem to always be present in rallies and mass demonstrations. They say, they fight for their rights, but when campaign period comes, they are the ones who cause for their rights to diminish. They are blinded by the bribes offered to them by the politicians. The poor accept bribes from corrupt politicians, politicians are elected, the poor fight and have rallies against the politician, then campaign period occurs again, the poor accept bribes, and this has been a vicious cycle.
The people blame the government when something they do not like so much happen. They say that those disastrous things happen because of the government officials themselves. They tend to remove themselves in politics since they are not politicians, as they say. They think, they have zero participation with the things that happens in the society they are in.
Since almost everybody knows the real main cause of poverty in the country, we could be hand-in-hand, working together to fight poverty. A widening gap between the rich and the poor should be removed in the system in the Philippines. It has been observed that as time pass by, the poor get poorer while the rich get richer. There should be an empowerment of the people so that this widened gap, if not totally removed in the Philippines, could be decreased just like the situations some years ago.
Next thing that could be done is to focus more on education. Knowledge is really power. Educated people could influence more than those uneducated. And also, if the next generations become highly educated, they could have their critical thinking. And when they do, they could choose the best politicians. They will not be blinded by the money offered to them.
Some people could not understand really that the political system of a country will tell whether the rate of the poor citizens will increase, or will decrease. The government should focus more on the root causes since we already know what the root causes are.
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