We won nature’s jackpot, but why are we broke?

A viral video recently nailed our national tragedy in a single, brutal sentence. That reel — claiming that we have everything except honest leaders — made me nod in agreement and rage with the truth of it. It’s the most infuriatingly accurate diagnosis of our national sickness I’ve heard in years. It’s not a lack of resources holding us back, but a surplus of thieves in suits.

Switzerland, with all its tidy precision, has no ocean. Not a single one. Their navy consists of tour boats on a lake. Singapore, that sparkling emporium of wealth, doesn’t have a rice field to its name. Their national dish is imported. Saudi Arabia, rich in oil, has virtually no forests. You won’t find a logging camp in the desert. Japan, an industrial titan, is so resource-poor that it imports sand for its concrete structures. The Netherlands, a country renowned for its engineering expertise, has no mountains. Their highest peak is a speed bump they call a “hill.”

Let’s look at the Philippines. It seems the universe, in a fantastically generous mood, decided to use the archipelago as a showroom for natural wonders. It has everything the others are missing. Oceans? It’s practically made of them. Rice fields? They paint the hills emerald. Forests? So dense you could lose a city in them. Minerals? Buried treasure. Mountains? Dramatic enough for an epic film.

With a winning ticket in the geographic lottery, the Philippines hit the jackpot. So, why does the national mood sometimes feel less of a celebration and more like a closing-out sale?

Simple. While other nations were forced to innovate with their one or two assets, the Philippines was handed the entire toolkit and then elected a bunch of… well, let’s call them “creative accountants”… to manage it.

Other countries built systems. The Philippines built syndicates that saw the nation’s boundless resources not as a foundation for prosperity, but as an all-you-can-steal buffet. Politics wasn’t framed as public service but incorporated as a family-owned, for-profit enterprise.

The national budget is the bottom line, and the dividends are spectacular — for a small group of “directors.”

Consider the most reliable annual economic stimulus — the billions sent home by overseas Filipinos. It’s a monumental act of love and sacrifice, a river of gold earned by nurses, engineers, and seafarers abroad. In a functional system, this river would have irrigated new industries, powered innovation, and built infrastructure so robust that it would be worthy of envy.

Instead, it seems to flow into a mysterious sinkhole of “fiscal evaporation.” The money for a road becomes a politician’s new sports car or a plane. The budget for a hospital wing is repurposed as a luxury condo and mansions. The funds for schoolbooks and health services are magically reallocated to a Swiss bank account. We’ve perfected the art of the “ghost project” — infrastructure that exists only on paper, in a budget, and in the value of a stolen peso.

The result is a tragicomedy of errors. We export some of the world’s best talent because we can’t seem to build a system worthy of them at home. We are a paradise that exports people, not products, from its own soil. Our greatest natural resource isn’t nickel or coconuts; it’s the resilience of our people, a resource so durable it can survive even the most extractive form of governance.

The diagnosis is not a poverty of resources. It’s a terminal case of leadership deficiency. Sad to say, we are like a five-star resort managed by a cartel that’s selling off the furniture and pocketing the rent.

Amnesia, indeed, is the corrupt official’s best friend. Truth is the only resource they can’t quite monopolize — no matter how many ghost projects they invent to try.

A nation with everything should have nothing to worry about. Except, it seems, the leaders it puts in charge of everything.

We are a nation being systematically pickpocketed by the very hands meant to be building our future. It’s the reason our national potential remains a promise, perpetually broken by a poverty of integrity.