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WAS it a
State of the Nation Address (Sona) or a planning session
by Neda?
The way
President Arroyo presented her Sona, it was as if all we
need is the construction of more septic tanks, canals,
ports, roads, airports, bridges to solve the country’s
problems and usher it into the 21st century. One wishes
it were as simple as that, but it seems we need more
reforms to achieve progress and those things are not
mentioned at all in the Sona.
First
things first. We all believe in the importance of
infrastructure development, and in fact pointed, in this
same space, to the need to make up for all those years
on underspending as policy planners obsessed themselves
with simple fiscal discipline.
We
sorely need good infrastructure at this time of
declining competitiveness. We need to upgrade all those
deteriorating roads and bridges, ports, airports and
seaports if only to attract investments and create more
jobs. And we need to build a lot more of them if only we
could catch up with the neighbors in global
competitiveness.
In the
last several years, we have been growing decently,
topping at 6.9 percent in the first quarter of the year.
But that growth performance has not been generating
enough jobs beyond the major cities because of bad
infrastructure, besides the fact that these new growth
drivers are basically technology-driven, implying that
only the schooled ones are benefiting.
Indeed,
if we want to bring the dynamics of growth to the
countryside, we need more infrastructure to generate
economic interaction between the urban and rural
economies. But in an archipelagic country separated by
bodies of water, building those roads, bridges, Internet
cables, ports, and airports alone would not do the job.
We need policy reforms to make the operations and the
use of such infrastructure competitive and efficient,
and this aspect is completely missing in the Sona.
President Arroyo mentioned
Mindanao several times, promising that government agencies like DENR, DA and DAR
are going to spend 30 percent of their budget on the
island. That’s certainly good news. There are also lots
of promises about new infrastructure projects. That’s
positive, given the continuing neglect of the island.
Nevertheless, all these promised goodies would have
limited socioeconomic impact given its continued
isolation from the national economic mainstream. Why?
Because Mindanaoans are not going to be competitive in
the global marketplace unless we have a competitive
inter-island shipping and port services industry. And we
can achieve a competitive inter-island shipping only if
we reform the policy regime that has been encouraging
and nurturing an oligopoly in this industry.
Certainly, the focus on infrastructure development would
make a lot of local executives very happy as it was
clear those projects were solicited by local and
regional politicians, and by congressmen—and the
President took pains to attribute who pitched what
project to her.
Many of
those projects, therefore, are politically driven and
could have doubtful economic and social impact. But if
we grant that indeed those projects were planned
carefully, it begs the question whether or not they are
going to be implemented honestly and the funds not
dissipated in graft and corruption.
This
question is important because until now the government
has not offered any measure or policy reform promoting
transparency and openness in the bidding and
implementation of these infrastructure projects.
One such
possible solution is legislating a freedom of
information law allowing access by citizens to important
documents governing government contracts as a
check-and-balance mechanism but there is no such thing
in the Sona.
In fact,
the Sona does not offer any significant policy reform at
improving governance at all. There was faint reference
to cheapening the cost of power but the statement
doesn’t provide any detail at all.
The
legislation she sought from Congress pertained mostly to
the political, such as buttressing the witness
protection program, increasing penalties against abuse
by law enforcers and several other measures that, at the
bottom, might very well be covered by existing statutes.
One gets
the sense this was her “comfort crumbs” to those who had
been nipping at her heels the past year, for allowing a
virtual undeclared dirty war, involving state elements,
to wreak havoc on militants and activists—including
those from the media, legal, church and peasant sectors.
One gets
the sense this was meant as a Palace catch-up to the
widely praised Supreme Court initiative to make the
judiciary a more aggressive player in stopping the
steady erosion of constitutional rights, particularly
the handling of petitions or appeals for habeas corpus,
among others.
And yet,
all she had to do, instead of “thickening the thicket of
legislation,” as Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. had put
it in his paper at the judicial summit, was to act on
the recommendations of her very own presidential
commission, chaired by ex-Justice Jose Melo.
One of
which, ironically, was to run after those who, while not
directly proven to have ordered political murders and
abductions, admitted to “inspiring” some uniformed men
to carry them out. The poster boy of such “inspiring”
figures was the man singled out in the last Sona, a
certain general Jovito Palparan. Ironic, that the
President praised him highly last year and now, because
of Chief Justice Puno’s initiative, plays along with
recommendations to curb abuses from people like him.
Rich in
irony, indeed, was this Sona. Rich also in
pork-barrel-type promises, strewn hither and dither, but
with no firm anchor, apparently just meant to please a
lot of local allies.
But
then, as she says, she meant this to provide a “harvest”
that her successor can gather. The question, though, is,
are they the right seeds to plant? |
