I’ve talked about the recent Ondoy and Pepeng typhoons and their revelations about the government’s failure to make adequate preparations. And in my recent speech before the Manila Overseas Press Club, I revealed these other messages from those two devastating storms—that in times of crisis one cannot afford to be inexperienced or unprepared; that every second counts and any hesitation on the part of the government and on the part of leadership can be fatal for so many.

This leads me to what the government needs at a time when another destructive typhoon visits our country. I’m referring to poverty. It’s no longer a threat because it has long affected millions of our countrymen, and yet has remained inadequately addressed year after year after year.

What our government needs is a competent, experienced and innovative leadership.

If the shareholders of giant corporations look up to competent, experienced and innovative chief executive officers or CEOs to deliver productive, profitable results in return for their votes, I submit that Filipino voters can demand, and deserve the same kind of competent, experienced and innovative leaders in government.

After all, Philippines Inc. can be considered the biggest corporation in the country, with annual output of more than P7 trillion in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), an annual operating budget of P1.4 trillion (P1.5 trillion for 2010), and shareholders totaling more than 90 million.

The “management” of Philippines Inc. has to borrow as much as P300 billion this year because it cannot collect enough revenues to meet its operating budget. GDP growth is down to a crawl—the government forecast is 0.8 percent to 1.8 percent (recent reports said the high end was lowered further to 1.3 percent to account for the damage caused by recent typhoons—from a three-decade-high of 7.1 percent in 2007.

Taking into account inflation and the annual population growth of about 2 percent turns economic growth to negative. We’re happy that the Philippines has not gone into recession, technically, like our more prosperous neighbors did, but 2-percent growth is not something to be proud of.

Economists believe that we need to grow at least 7 percent every year for several years to raise the incomes of the poor and free them from the shackles of impoverishment.

I agree, and I know what I’m talking about. I was born poor and lived as a poor boy for the early part of my life, so my first ambition or dream was to get out of poverty.

On my way out the reality of my poor roots continued to pull me back to the complication that poverty brings: the loss of human dignity that hinders the fulfillment of one’s potential.

I got out of poverty and made a fortune through hard work and perseverance, long before I went to public service.

My experience, and the knowledge I acquired from education and from that experience helped me realize why Philippines Inc. has not delivered satisfactory results to its 90 million shareholders, except in 2007 when it was, unfortunately, not sustained.

It is because for a long time we have not had any CEOs—or those we call presidents—who genuinely understood the plight of the poor man, not because they were not intelligent enough, not because they did not care enough, but simply because they were never genuinely poor.

If a leader does not know how it feels to worry about food for tomorrow, if a leader does not understand the stress of having to live under a roof that could be carried away by the next typhoon, if a leader cannot genuinely say that he has felt the pain and even the indignity of being poor in this country, how can he genuinely work for the interests of the majority of our people?

It is easy for anyone to say that he understands the plight of our poor, but only those who lived as a poor boy can truly grasp the full burden of poverty.

Laws and market forces make sure that private corporations are managed by the best CEOs. The Philippines deserves the best of the best. The best CEOs never got their positions on a silver platter; they rose from the ranks, and were placed in their positions by shareholders who were satisfied by their performance.

Likewise, the CEO position for Philippines Inc. is not for an inexperienced trainee. That is, it is not a position for an on-the-job trainee, especially not when the corporation is facing a P300-billion deficit, while its output (GDP) is barely improving.

This is not political talk. I’m talking about what I learned from my student days at the University of the Philippines, as a young employee in Makati and then as an entrepreneur.

I realized that the best government is a government that facilitates, that allows resources to match needs, that provides opportunities, that protects the weak and encourages the diligent and rewards the hard working.

When government is not all of these, it is a stumbling bloc to progress, and as such it fails in its most basic of responsibilities and loses its reason for being.

I learned another lesson from my experience in public service: as a facilitator, the government need not dictate. In fact, more often than not, government is more effective when it resorts to promoting dialogue between stakeholders and finding the acceptable compromise that leaves all parties better off in the end.

This boils down to one thing—the Philippines is a troubled corporation. It needs a chief executive that can move swiftly to increase resources, finance infrastructure projects, cut costs, attract more capital, and push economic growth to a consistent average of at least 7 percent a year.

The final objective is to bring prosperity to the poor who comprise the majority of Philippine Inc.’s shareholders.

This is a job that calls for the most trained, experienced and dedicated CEO!

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