The bare minimum
We have lowered the bar so far that doing what should have been done in the first place can now look like an accomplishment.
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We have lowered the bar so far that doing what should have been done in the first place can now look like an accomplishment.
There is something depressing about driving past a newly built road that looks as though nobody thought about how it would look once the ribbon-cutting was over.
There are stretches where you wonder if the project is truly finished or if they just stopped when it became usable but never came back to clear the roadside debris. The sight would not make a brutalist architect sigh with appreciation. In fact, it invites vandals to “decorate” the unpainted structures.
For other projects, the pavement may be new, the barriers in place, the signs standing. Technically, the work has been done. But was it done well?
Somewhere along the way, “functional” became synonymous with “good enough.” For us, a road merely needs to be passable. A drainage project merely needs to exist. A public building merely needs to be completed. And when it does, we call it progress.
We tend to forget that a government project isn’t simply concrete, asphalt and steel. It is public money made visible. If we spend billions on infrastructure, shouldn’t we expect functionality plus durability plus safety plus accessibility plus aesthetics?
A road can be structurally sound and still be badly designed. A pedestrian facility can technically exist and still be hostile to pedestrians. A public building can be completed and still be ugly, inconvenient and disconnected from its surroundings. The public realm is part of “quality of life.”
Have we become so accustomed to poor public service that we now celebrate the bare minimum as an achievement?
A government agency releases a statement after a scandal. An official says an investigation will be conducted. A contractor repairs defective work after the public complains. A politician attends a disaster site and hands out relief goods while cameras roll.
And yet we often treat these things as evidence of extraordinary leadership. We have lowered the bar so far that doing what should have been done in the first place can now look like an accomplishment.
Filipinos are often praised for being “resilient.” But there’s a dangerous side to resilience: if people continually adjust to bad conditions, institutions can become comfortable producing them.
We learn to live with traffic, flooding, broken sidewalks, unreliable public transport, and political promises that never quite become results. Then we tell ourselves, “At least they did something.” Sometimes “something” isn’t enough, especially when the project costs billions in taxpayers’ money.
The bare minimum has become a political strategy: do something visible, show up where calamity struck, take the photograph, announce the budget, declare success — then move on before anyone asks whether the thing actually works, whether it will last, or whether taxpayers got their money’s worth.
Nobody is demanding perfection. It’s about standards. The bare minimum we should demand is competence.
Public spaces tell citizens what their government thinks they deserve. A city with thoughtful sidewalks, healthy trees, proper lighting, proper drainage, and well-designed transport tells us: You matter. Infrastructure that is slapped together and visually chaotic communicates something else: This will do. Pwede na ‘to. Okay na ‘yan.
We should stop congratulating ourselves every time government clears the lowest bar. A bridge that doesn’t collapse is not an extraordinary achievement.
A road that is serviceable but also scenic is not unusual. A drainage system that drains is not a gift. A public office that answers its constituents is not an act of heroism. These are the things government is supposed to do.
We should expect more, not because government can deliver perfection, but because public money deserves competence, public spaces deserve dignity, and citizens deserve better than survival.
The first step toward better governance is to stop calling the bare minimum good enough. Let’s raise the bar that has been lying on the ground for too long.
