True to tradition, President Aquino gloated about his small accomplishments, ignored his unfulfilled promises, and placed the blame on the previous administration for some of his failures in his two-hour State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA) last Monday.
Among his few successes is the sustained economic growth during his five years in Malacanang. Even the opposition can’t deny the fact that the Philippine economy grew by an average of more than 6.5 percent although it has begun to slow down to 5.2 percent in the first three months of the year, and that the resurgent economy has attracted record foreign direct investments.
However, we also cannot discount the fact that the economic growth started in the last two years of the Arroyo administration who Aquino now blames for everything wrong with the country.
On the other hand, we must give the President credit for assembling an outstanding team of technocrats to steer the country’s economy to achieve the highest GDP growth in 40 years and second only to China in Asia. With still a year to go for this administration, we must toast these excellent economic managers — Finance Secretary Cesaa Purisima, Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. and Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares. That’s what happens when a President surrounds himself with technocrats.
However, despite their best efforts, the country still has to achieve inclusive growth where the benefits of the rapid rise in the economy trickles down to the poorest sector of the economy in terms of more jobs, better wages, better living conditions and less hunger and poverty.
And that’s where the bigger part of the Cabinet comes in – that one where traditional politicians, instead of technocrats and experienced managers, rule. That Aquino named to his huge Cabinet mostly career politicians and bureaucrats aspiring to become politicians is his undoing and is reflective of his being himself a dyed-in-the-wool traditional politician (trapo).
The President, for example, blamed the administration of his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, again, this time for the failures of the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) and the Light Rail Transit (LRT), which he promised to fix in two years during his 2013 SONA. In those two years, the agencies have been haunted by scandals, accidents, and poor service. He said the MRT managers in 2008 should have fixed the problem.
But why wasn’t his appointed Transportation and Communications Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya, a longtime congressman and president of the ruling Liberal Party, able to fix the problems and improve the services in the five years he has held the post and instead was only able to plunge the agency to corruption scandals, questionable deals and worsening service? Why wasn’t Abaya investigated and replaced when it became apparent that he couldn’t do the job?
In agriculture, where another trapo – former Rep. Proceso Alcala – has been the honcho for five years now, the Aquino administration bungled another boast and promise. In his first SONA in 2011, he promised to end over-importation of rice and to achieve self-sufficiency in the basic staple. In his subsequent trips abroad, he boasted that the Philippines was not only on the road to self-sufficiency but was poised to become a rice exporter by the middle of his term.
Five years later, thanks to the incompetence and questionable acts of Alcala and his assistants, the country continues to import rice heavily from its neighbors to meet the needs of the people.
And then there’s the nagging problem of under-spending and questionable lump sum programs and expenses that have haunted the Aquino administration in the last two or three years. This is another sensitive post that was given to an LP stalwart and trapo, former Rep. Florencio Abad, whose five-year tenure as Budget Secretary has so far received two rejections from the Supreme Court on the matter of the Priority Assistance Development Fund or the PDAF (congressional pork) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program or the DAP (presidential pork) which were evidently used to impeach Chief Justice Renato Corona and make the lawmakers toe the Palace line.
Power shortages have been a nagging problem for the country for years and guess who Aquino tapped to solve the problem? Another politician — young but still a trapo – former Leyte governor Jericho Petilla, who warned many times about the coming crisis but could not do anything about it or did not know what to do about it.
Another sensitive agency that enjoyed huge appropriation in this year’s and next year’s budgets, the Department of Interior and Local Governments, went to favored former Senator Mar Roxas, who is touted to be the LP’s presidential candidate and Aquino’s anointed one for the 2016 elections.
Although it is almost certain that Roxas is not privy to many shady deals involving purchases and other shenanigans by the Philippine National Police, that is precisely one of the reasons his ratings is not rising in the presidential surveys. As the Cabinet secretary in charge of the PNP, he should be on top of all the deals and major acts of the police leadership. Obviously, he is not as can be gleaned from the bungled SAF operation in Mamasapanto that resulted in the death of 44 elite policemen. Roxas was as confused and as uninformed as all of us.
With government resources at their disposal, Aquino and Roxas have failed to win the good graces of provincial governors and city mayors all over the country, who surveys show are more inclined to support Binay over Roxas. The incompetence and insensitivity of these two friends showed in the aftermath of super typhoon Yolanda when the national government failed to respond in time and in the proper manner to the urgent needs of the victims.
The same brand of incompetence and insensitivity to the victims were shown by another Cabinet member, Social Services Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman, who although a non-politician, acts and thinks like a politician because she has worked with them for years during the time of Arroyo and later of Aquino. She should be held responsible for the delay of the distribution of relief goods, many of which rotted in warehouses, and the continued suffering of the victims of Yolanda and the Zamboanga siege, most of whom continue to live in tents.
Civil society groups, the bishops, and readers polled by the Philippine Daily Inquirer agree that Aquino has succeeded in some and failed in many of the promises he made during the campaign and in subsequent SONAs.
The multisectoral Movement for Good Governance (MGG) gave Aquino a 5.9 rating out of a possible 10. The bishops said they were not impressed by the President’s “tuwid na daan” and that Aquino has failed to rid the government of corruption. The Inquirer poll, on the other hand, said the readers found the President to have fulfilled only 11 of the 30 promises that he had made in his five previous SONAs.
Majority of the respondents said Aquino failed miserably in at least three major promises — give justice to victims of extrajudicial killings, pass and implement the Bangsamoro Basic Law, and move toward rice self-sufficiency.
Other significant promises where Aquino failed, according to the Inquirer readers, are empowering farmers, agrarian reform, Freedom of Information bill, LRT and MRT, Zamboanga and Yolanda refugees, classroom and textbook shortage, preparing for energy crisis, building infrastructure for growth, job generation, helping the poor, and relocating squatters. Add to that his failure to administer impartial justice, instead of the reigning selective justice.
Just like the Inquirer readers, I’m giving Aquino a passing grade in the sustained economic growth, his firm stand against China, the Reproductive Health Law and tourism growth.
With his many promises under his “daang matuwid,” Aquino raised the bar on governance but failed to live up to expectations, resulting in dashed hopes for the people he called his “bosses.”
(valabelgas@aol.com)