We had very high expectations of the Aquino administration when it was inaugurated on June 30 last year.
One year later, what’s the score?
Not much, I’m afraid.
It started off on the wrong foot and stumbled facedown when it failed to peacefully resolve the August 23 Luneta hostage-taking, resulting in the death of nine Hong Kong tourists and the souring Philippines-China relations.
The Aquino administration came to power on the strength of its campaign battle cry, “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.” As political slogans go, it proved effective, as it clearly resonated with voters already sick and tired of systemic corruption.
But the problem with promising too much—and achieving so little after one year—is that it does not augur well at all for the next five years of this administration.
The President must deliver on both promises: He must curb corruption and make a significant dent on poverty. It’s a double burden that will require herculean effort to solve.
Reducing poverty should be the end-goal of economic construction. As things stand, however, the much-ballyhooed Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Program touted to create jobs and put up vital public infrastructure is still in the bidding stage, with no new PPP project already up and running.
I am all in favor of the Conditional Cash-Transfer Program that seeks to help the poorest of the poor. I don’t think this will encourage mendicancy at all. Those who are really hard up and cannot afford to eat three square meals a day have only tattered clothes on their backs, and the big sky as the roof over their heads need all the help they can get from the government.
What I find disturbing is the President’s apparent inability to recruit the best and the brightest in the government, and his reliance solely on what the opposition calls the “KKK,” or the kaibigan, kaklase and kabarilan, who now occupy plum posts in government. Mr. Aquino is fast emerging as a traditional politician who doesn’t think twice about rewarding his allies and supporters with the spoils of victory. If he continues on this course, his anticorruption campaign will go to naught, and he sets himself up for the ultimate irony: the son of two revered democracy icons being driven away from office by the very same People Power that catapulted his mother Cory to the presidency in 1986.
The President complained last week that he’s been in office for barely a year and his detractors have not stopped pointing out his shortcomings. The context of that statement was criticism from the Cotabato City mayor that he went to the flood-ravaged province bringing no relief goods. Well, the President brought only himself and his bodyguards for a peremptory look-see and barked orders for authorities to see how the water hyacinths blocking the flow of the river could be removed. He could have shown genuine concern for the plight of the residents by joining the soldiers uprooting the pesky weeds by hand, if only briefly. But he chose to survey the scene from atop a bridge, and missed a golden opportunity to demonstrate sincerity in looking after the people’s welfare.
“I’ve been in office for barely a year,” he said. It’s a refrain we’re probably going to hear for the next six years. “I’ve been in office for only two years,” he will say next year, and so on until 2016, when he is likely to say the same thing because the problems left by his predecessors—and history—were simply too enormous to be solved in six years.
The past 365 days should have been enough time already to make a dent on poverty, and to demonstrate that corruption and incompetence have no place in this administration. But obviously for Mr. Aquino, it’s too short a time to make substantial progress in nation-building. Meanwhile, he probably spends more time looking under the hood of his P4.5- million turbocharged Porsche, or test-firing the 16—that’s 16—guns that he owns in the firing range, or arranging dates with women he fancies. The 15 million or so Filipinos who voted for him certainly deserve something better that would improve their lives. Mr. Aquino cannot be spending too much private time, because the presidency is a 24/7 job and demands sacrifice.
Nepa calls for SME chamber
Small and medium enterprises (SME) should be represented in the formulation of major economic policies, according to the National Economic Protectionism Association (Nepa). Nepa president Bayan de la Cruz said the group would call on the legislature to expedite the formation of a Chamber of Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises. “Nepa lauds and supports our legislators’ efforts, particularly those of Sen. Manny Villar and Rep. Teddy Casiño, to raise the capabilities of the country’s SMEs, as well as the micro and informal sectors of the economy, in the light of greater pressure due to a globalized economy,” de la Cruz said. “It is important to note that SMEs are the country’s lifeblood, representing 99 percent of all economic activity. They deserve more than the token attention they get now,” he added.
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
