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NO SECOND TERM FOR PNOY BUT A NEW OPEN ENDED MANDATE (Part Three)

This piece continues and ends  the trilogy on PNOY’s  No, No, No, Yes, Yes, NOoo…   to inveiglements  to continue in office as President  and to unexamine his much examined presidency. For what and where Noynoy had done good, for his grade of 7 out of 10, you will find them in his  past  State of the Nation (SONA) speeches he has delivered in Congress. No need to review those product of his speech writers.  Put in another positive way there’s   only 3 rotten tomatoes and 7 good ones in small basket—that  much of  which should be attributed  more to the achieving Filipinos (OFWs, the professionals, expats and immigrants and the common working men and women) than to PNoy in pushing up the GNP. 

The three bad tomatoes for grilling over the coals may be simplified as the social,  economic and political dimensions of executive administration. What did  P Noy fail to do in the health, education and justice sector; in  unemployment and food on the table; and in national and local governments administration?

If P Noy did not know where he was after being sworn to office when he gave the command: Forward March to his straight path ( Tuwid na Daan) to Shangi-La. That’s too bad, but not entirely.  One just can not go anywhere if he does not know where is starting from. He can  go in circles or just meander. If you are in Manila you can not just go to Quiapo if you don’t know you are in San Andres or Sta Ana. You might just find yourself in  Leveriza, Pasay City.  That’s a jeepney driver metaphor.

P Noy and his work horses should know from the very beginning the plenitude  of work and places to visit along side the scarcity of time and resources they have on their hands. It is easy to be politically correct and pompous in setting charming goals.  Being in politics should not be an excuse. Realism puts into shame ephemeral political idealism. That’s why in the media the coals of criticism   keep on smouldering.

In their days Socrates, Plato and Aristotle did not need always to quantify  to support their observations. Reasons sufficed. They could have foreseen in the dialogues the inevitable decline  of Greece as a nation state.   One can say that PNoy’s  performance rating of  3  tomatoes are in a state of decay with large quantities of maggots hastening dissolution  of their   physical existence. 

P Noy and his people could have asked  and written in stone the following: How many school children are out of school now, how many they will be yearly in the next ten years. What will they need now and yearly six years  in the future in terms of school building, teachers, desks, toilets, books, etcetera.  After almost five years what are the discrepancies as perceived by the people in the cities and very remote municipalities? 

On the education of the youth alone, P NOY could have reported: On a scale of ideal 100 units for all variables, we found in the last 20 years past administrations had accumulated a  deficit of  80 units and that we have determined based on projected population we can only do 10  units every year. So after six years we will still have a realistic deficit of  20 units. Optimistic planning and due diligence in implementation will still leave to succeeding administration a deficit of 20 units.  

To substantiate a six-year itinerary for child, youth and professional education with concrete figures there must be credible answers to questions like What remains undone and what remains to be done after six years of painstaking governance in the education sector?  If PNOY planners did not  do this, they will—still  clueless—be where they started.   

In the above example, knowing where you are; knowing where you NEED  to go 80 kilometers away; you know before hand you will run out of gas when you reached 60 kilometers in 6 time units. These examples in the education sector deal with the number of school buildings, pupils, teachers, textbooks, computers; in the health sector it is about the number of hospitals, clinics, doctors, nurses, ambulances, dialysis, MRI, ECG, Ultra Sound machines, paramedics etc;  

In the administration of justice,  knowing where you are can knock you unconscious.  The number of undecided, pending and whatever civil and criminal cases can give you fainting spells:

From the internet: “NSCB Secretary General Jose Ramon Albert said that from 2005 to 2010, lower courts were continuously confronted with heavy volume of caseload, with an annual average of 1,059,484 cases or equivalent to an average of around 4,221 cases per working day.”

Applying an outside the box perspective might  provide the only solution which sadly  HISTORY and  the present  CULTURE will not allow:  release then re-train 80% of the prisoners who are not supposed to be in jail in the first place, study the backlogs  and burn all hibernating cases; fire 50%, from which jail 20%  of the justices, judges and prosecutors, reduce the number of lawyers and re-train them for more productive work; sounds like Mao Tse Tung’s legal cultural revolution of 1968?  Not really when you study the  ROLE  of law (NOT THE RULE OF LAW) in the happy OKAY top 20 countries in UN Human Development Index as the bases to establish where you are;  only then will you know how  far you can not go. Anywhere.  The ultimate measure in rendering justice for peace and national progress is the extent to which criminals and law breakers are punished with fines and imprisonment.  Without that,  wave good bye to peace, order and progress. The exercise of police power is a joke when ever positive judicial power is inutil.    

In the infrastructure, public works, communications and transportation sectors, to know where you  are  is to establish how backward is the country in terms of the technology applied  in all those sectors; whether roads and bridges’ technical life is might only be only up to the  next 10 year flood. Whether tourist politicians were dumb not to notice efficient transport systems in metro cities they visit regularly  like the Big Apple, LA, London,  Paris, Stockholm explains lame public policies in the Philippines metro traffic systems. 

Hongkong have long ago realized that rickshaw as mass transport ingenuity and  for exercise  can shorten the poor man’s life. Manila is yet to realize that the singular pride and world  famous colorful jeepney is driven by men who must retire at age forty to avoid an early grave.

 In fine and in Metro cities, infrastructure honchos  should  be techno savvy on the prime requirements of urbanization:  moving people without idotic delays  in all hours to earn their livelihood  and stimulate economic activities and moving goods, materials   and equipment  sustain the lifeblood of cities.  This is the Canker of Metro Manila.

In this sector  too,  kilometers of  roads and concrete and steel bridges; kilometers of rail structures underground, on the ground and above the ground should establish where we are. Losing the trains and rails to La Union,  closing down the leisurely train travel from Iloilo City to Roxas City in Panay island and allowing the deterioration of the slow Bicol express to Albay are red flags—over  the years—on  the neurons of our transport officials. As we are locked  up in the decaying MRT and LRT, we are  still in outer space orbiting distant planets  when  we  think of having  railroads  west to east of  Mindanao, north to south of Cebu,  coastal perimeter of Panay island, etc.   

In the economic sector, it is a different story  when you are trying to establish where you are or where is your starting point. If you start where you are and have not moved in 6 years time, you can be well of or richer after having maintain an annual 6% GNP.

To bureaucrats and politicians: Take the unemployment rate, the highest in Southeast Asia. You can hypothetically  start  unemployment  at 7.3%  of the labor force (38.8m) during the first year  and claim improvement when unemployment  is the same at  7.3%  of the labor (41.6m) after 5 years; However, there will still be 202 thousand (plus) unemployed more than the almost 3 million without jobs during your first year. .

Economists should debunk as bunk this celestial metaphor: If the economist St. Peter of the Pearly Gates is asked: During the last four years have there be an increased  in the number of souls going to heaven redeemed from purgatory? “Well”, answered St. Peter, “we can only make assumptions, because many factors are involved that we can make assumptions out of  assumptions;  man does not live by bread alone many happily wallow in their sins. Of the total that leaves earth every year, a few or several are turned back, some who are  destined to purgatory actually preferred to go to hell that reminds them of home on earth, some worst ones  for hell are sent to limbo to join the animals. God is merciful, the holiest of holies that’s why the soul population in heaven is steady and beyond measure.  By the way we don’t reckon years or have time in eternal heaven. It is like unemployment in the Philippines, while a few hundreds are losing their jobs in the  few factories and numerous  malls, many  thousands start selling vegetables, tahu and tahong  on sidewalks. Please bear in mind no mistakes ever happen in celestial headquarters. Everything is perfect.”

What about the national-local nexus of political administration? It seems to be the unexamined baby of media. Not much howling and crying from the provinces, cities and towns and barangays  except for a few calamity driven complaints from non-administration local officials. Media space seems parsimonious even on mere mention of the word local autonomy. If ever this is a part of the consideration on the PNOY’s continuance in office, local politicians in their bailiwicks and in the Congress certainly will have  weighty influence on its outcome.

Is PNoy over the coals yet?  Wait a bit more, I just gotten  hold of the water hose.  Got to  hose down the coals already because much of the pus he didn’t cause anyway. 

Filipino political negative wisdom seemed to have followed the dictum that four years in office is too short for a good president but  two terms of four  years are too long for a bad president.  Wow !  Turn it on its head: 4-year term is too short for a bad president and an 8-year term is too long for a good president to even wish for. Let’s have six years then and let’s see what happens?  More of this on my next piece. ****

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