Year after year, in anticipation of the coming new year, our people eagerly await the change in the social and political milieu that the politicians promise us. More particularly, those in the periphery of our society wish and hope that their situation in life improves and they will be uplifted from their unchanged wretched circumstances.

Of course, the filthy mindless rich and the corrupt powerful would rather maintain the present state of condition. They will resist change at every turn, using their wealth, their influence, and their positions to purvey the status quo.

Those in the upper middle class wait in the wings to join the ruling elite. The lower and middle-class stay focused on their climb to strengthen their newfound comforts and wait where the political wind blows to jump on the bandwagon.

The toiling industrial working class does their daily grind of working under oppressive working conditions and continues with their demand for a hike in wages and benefits that are, most of the time, not satisfactorily responded to. The informal workers are always on their wits end on how to earn their daily keep. The farmers and the fisherfolk are still harping for the government's response to their need to increase their harvest and catch. The rest of the majority of Filipinos are glued to their informal dwellings, crowded, unsanitary, fire hazard, and flood and natural disaster-prone.

Most of them try to eke out a living, hardly enough to sustain three meals a day. Others rely on the handouts of their relatives, still, others depend on government cash benefits and ayudas, charitable institutions, philanthropic foundations, and kind-hearted souls. Many live along esteros, under the bridge, in the mountainsides, and other God-forsaken places. Many litter the streets begging for alms and even sleep on the pavements. Not a few die of hunger and medically unattended ailments due to poverty.

The majority of the poor remain uneducated, not even finishing grade school. Others who finish high school marry young and join the increasing number of unemployed. The law granting free tertiary education is availed of by the very rich and those in the upper social totem pole because they are intellectually well equipped to pass the entrance examinations as compared to the poor applicants whose educational foundation is as weak as their financial capabilities.

Even those qualified coming from poor families cannot maintain the required high grades for the same reasons, e.g. lack of adequate healthy food, clothing, transportation, school supplies, and tutorials, which are essential for a strong foundation in quality learning. The personal circumstances of poor students are not conducive to acquiring quality primary and secondary education. Necessarily, they pale in comparison with the wealthy students who have the wherewithal to sharpen their intellect.

We have a situation where the government spends billions for free tertiary education for rich students who can afford it while depriving the financially strapped ones who are the intended beneficiaries of the law.

Since most of the poor children are uneducated, and if educated, are inadequately prepared for employment, they, like their parents, end up becoming either construction workers, handymen, tricycle or jeepney drivers, or worse they join the ranks of petty criminals and drug pushers.

Only those with a burning obsession to rise from the depths of poverty, thru sheer determination to hurdle the gauntlet of deprivation, make a conscious effort to free themselves from their cage of penury, fiercely struggle to study and work to finance their education until they can gain employment in white-collar jobs. Those who excel in their chosen profession or business help their siblings follow in their footsteps.

Not all filthy rich are indifferent and heartless. The current business tycoons are sons and daughters of parents who were poor and refused to be bound by their deprived origins. Thru hard work, discipline, creativity, and indefatigable spirit, they started their business ventures until they grew into the empires that they are today. They follow corporate and labor laws and do not cheat the government by paying the correct taxes and treating their employees well.

They also established foundations that regularly give social benefits to the downtrodden and provide free scholarships to deserving students whose parents cannot afford to pay their tuition fees.

They help and encourage a new generation of entrepreneurs to establish small and medium enterprises that help the growth of the country's economy.

But the other ugly face of our landscape is the presence of corrupt politicians who plunder the wealth of our country and who manage to elect themselves into office. They take turns in stealing from the national treasury by way of government projects that they expertly maneuver and succeed in siphoning much of the allocated funds into their pockets.

These are the scoundrels who every election time use their political demagoguery and make the electorate believe that once they are elected into office they will bring about the changes that the deprived majority hope and dream would uplift them from their eternally miserable social condition.

And so here they are again, as we begin the countdown for the new year, their hopes and dreams of a bright tomorrow leap sky high once more, only to have those hopes and dreams remain magnificent fantasies. Unrealized.