‘No rain! No rain! No rain!” went the chant of the half-a-million crowd to stop the downpour from drenching them to the bones while they watched one music performer after another in the Woodstock music festival—billed as “Three Days of Music, Peace and Love”—at the height of summer in August 1969.

Those born in the ’50s and were hippies during the ’60s—and nearing retirement by this time—must certainly remember this scene from the Woodstock documentary, one of the highlights of an epochal event that defined a generation.

Now, I don’t know if the collective chant sent heavenward at Woodstock, fueled perhaps by a mixture of youthful idealism and a cocktail of chemical substances, stopped the rains from coming.

But maybe the same collective chant, but with a twist—it should be “More rain! More rain! More rain!”—is precisely what we need to send heavenward at this time, when the specter of drought threatens to turn the economy topsy-turvy, and Filipinos must deal with the prospect of no water coming from taps and periodic power outages leaving us sweltering from the intense tropical heat at daytime and groping in the dark at night. 

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, or Pagasa, would, no doubt, be happy if we get even a succession of strong typhoons in the coming months. The dams supplying Metro Manila’s water needs and Luzon’s irrigation requirements are slowly but steadily drying up because of the prolonged dry season due to the El Niño phenomenon, which, as everyone knows by now, is intimately connected with global warming. 

But Pagasa says the weather outlook for next month remains “grim,” with rainfall expected to be below normal. Thus, we can expect drought conditions that will most likely exact a heavy toll on agricultural crops, which will naturally bring food prices up.

Latest reports indicate that the National Water Resources Board has begun implementing a cutback in the water supply for irrigation in the provinces of Bulacan and Pampanga, and domestic use in the metropolis to stretch the use of available water in Luzon dams.

With water rationing and power outages due to the looming breakdown of hydroelectric power plants a distinct possibility if the dry spell continues, the economy could suffer a terrible beating in the coming months, and the citizenry may have to just grin and bear it.

‘Worser’

The good news is that red tape and small-time graft is on the decline. You can renew your driving licenses or car registration without having to go through fixers at the Land Transportation Office, for instance, although you could still use their services if you really want to save time and energy. For a fee, of course.   

The bad news, according to the Transparency and Accountability Network, a local anticorruption watchdog, is that the crooks in the government are targeting the “big-ticket” items that involve hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pesos.

That view is shared by a senior official of the government think-tank, the Development Academy of the Philippines: “Bribery is going down. But the grand or bigger types of corruption are on the rise.”

Foreign businessmen surveyed early this year by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy to gauge the extent of corruption in the public sector gave the Philippines an average score of nine, one notch from the worst, with zero as the best possible score. A recent survey by the Social Weather Stations, meanwhile, also showed that the scale of corruption in the government remained high.

I really don’t know how Malacañang will respond to this rash of negative reports on corruption in the Arroyo administration. The fact is that since 2001, no big fish, except perhaps the former AFP comptroller, has been locked up due to plunder, despite pronouncements that the Presidential Antigraft Commission has been conducting lifestyle checks on presidential appointees.

It’s not far-fetched that proadministration officials will counter the negative propaganda by saying that corruption exposés are unfounded and are no more than desperate attempts by the opposition and Left-Right groups to destabilize the Arroyo government.

But the administration cannot blithely dismiss the perception that large-scale graft is taking place. What it should do is take decisive steps to nip corruption in the bud, and one of the first things it must do is to be transparent in all its dealings.

With the government wary about making available to the public the details of contracts, such as the $330-million broadband deal between the Philippine government and the Chinese telecommunication firm ZTE Corp., the people cannot help but wonder whether there is a lot of hanky-panky going on in the corridors of power.

The conspiracy of silence must stop. After all, our Constitution explicitly provides for the right of the people to information on matters of public interest, and affords public access to official records and documents pertaining to official acts, transactions and decisions.

‘THE Philippines should emulate China by posting a 9.5-percent growth continuously for 25 years. Maybe then, it would become a First World country,” said an official from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) at the presentation of the results of the 2005 Purchasing-Power Parity Preliminary Report.

There’s no better way to judge a man, the old saying goes, than by the caliber of his critics.

With the fall of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) over the last week, I have been frequently “e-mailed.”

‘No rain! No rain! No rain!” went the chant of the half-a-million crowd to stop the downpour from drenching them to the bones while they watched one music performer after another in the Woodstock music festival—billed as “Three Days of Music, Peace and Love”—at the height of summer in August 1969.

Is there a connection between the breach of the constitutional limit on the foreign ownership in the listed firm Philippine Racing Club Inc. (PRCI) with a forthcoming real-estate play in the 21-hectare prime lot in Sta. Ana Racetrack conservatively valued at P10 billion?

The Indian authorities may have finally become serious about mopping up unwarranted liquidity in the banking system.

Vanity of vanities

Ecclesiastes is the Greek term for the Hebrew Qoheleth, someone who serves the assembly of the people, a teacher or preacher. This sage of the fourth or third century before Christ had carefully examined the world he lived in and was convinced that when everything is said and done, life is a basket of vanities.