VIRTUALLY left to our own devices to recover from the devastation of the last war, the shrinking of essential services and the erosion of moral values, we now see too many people demanding relief without putting in commensurate contribution to the common weal.

Since jobless, hungry, ill-prepared individuals cannot compete in this increasingly hostile environment, somebody or something should step in to right things for them and restore the social balance that fear and greed have distorted.

Respect for the law and revered institutions keeps dropping as the neglected milions mired in poverty notice that corruption pays and that those with money and power dominate the playing field.

After decades of misgovernment by the ruling elite, the masses huddled in the shadows picked last May 9 one of themselves – Rodrigo Roa Duterte — an unpretentious local politician, a bit rough at the edges but upright, to lead them into the sunshine.

This observer does not know him personally, but based on his published statements and off-the-cuff utterances captured on TV, Mr. Duterte strikes us as that kind of leader who could inject the discipline the nation needs.

We have long held that what this country badly needs is good, old discipline – something we could learn anew from a leader who would whip us into line for our own sake. Too long have we allowed ourselves to be exploited by corrupt officials, and misled from the straight and narrow.

In September 44 years ago, then President Ferdinand E. Marcos tried to instill national discipline by declaring martial rule. We actually started to get used to his tight harness after a year, but something or someone close to him made pakialam and ruined it.

Now comes Mr. Duterte poised to give Mr. Marcos a hero’s burial on hallowed grounds, but that is another subject. (For the record, this former Manila Times reporter whose paper was padlocked by the dictator in 1972 is against the desecration of the Libingan ng mga Bayani.)

• Crack the whip, slam the baseball bat

SORRY for digressing, but to return to our point about resorting to the whip, we cite the traffic bedlam on EDSA, an ugly microcosm of what ails us as a nation, a kind of arteriosclerosis threatening to choke to death the national capital of the Philippines.

It is time we wielded the big stick on errant drivers on EDSA – actually a “dos-por-dos” or a baseball bat slammed on every vehicle that crosses the line would do. Or, for maximum effect, an armor-piercing bullet fired into the engine block of every smoke-belching monster of a bus.

Now, using such force could get traffic officers into trouble, as it has raised concern over Mr. Duterte’s “kill ‘em” marching order. Unintentionally, the Commander-in-Chief may have given a new meaning to “trouble shooting” when he ordered the shooting of trouble-makers.

The ensuing feud with the Chief Justice, some senators, human rights advocates, lawyers, the media – plus the expression of concern by the US State Department – has a growing number of people wondering if Mr. Duterte is laying the basis for martial law.

Whatever it is that Mr. Duterte is rubbing off his chin, whether it is indeed martial law or a follow-up round of extrajudicial killings, we think his bloody score (something like 1,000 since his June 30 takeover) will be for naught if he fails to produce satisfaction in the real gut issues of livelihood.

Mr. Duterte can pile up in six months the corpses of a million suspected drug users and narco protectors, but if he cannot produce good jobs, decent wages, cheaper food, low-cost dwellings, etc., the high expectations that he had generated may drop like cold EJK cadavers.

• What about promised power rate cuts?

ANOTHER item on the Duterte plate is his promised lower cost of electricity. But even now we are assailed by reports that power rates will go up next month because of price factors that Malacañang may have missed while engrossed with the narcotics problem.

It looks like the President is set to embark next on a campaign targeting rich tax-evaders. We understand his need for increased revenue considering his priority plan to double the salaries of soldiers and policemen upon whom he would depend in emergencies. A throne of bayonets could be expensive.

Before the 2016 elections, then newly-appointed Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Jose Vicente Salazar announced that the agency would focus on two reform measures.

One measure directs distribution utilities to conduct open bidding among power-generating companies interested in supplying them electricity that they in turn will sell to households and business establishments.

The other measure expands the coverage of the so-called retail competition and open access. This is based on the provision of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) giving a greater number of big power consumers the freedom to choose the electricity sellers they want to buy from.

What Salazar and the ERC are pushing is nothing new as far as big industry players are concerned. These projected changes have long been announced and were, in fact, publicized when the EPIRA was passed.

It was assumed that Salazar would make these reforms happen, but according to sources some giant power concerns expecting to be hurt by the reforms lobbied against their prompt adoption — in another instance of regulatory capture.

The President’s declaring war on big business interests engaged in illegal mining has buoyed hopes that he would not allow the continued blocking of reforms in the power industry.