In the predecessor issue of BALITA I gave P Noy a score of 7 from a perfect performance of 10 against a minuscule criteria of:
“rampant crimes against persons and properties, continuing corruption in the departments and public sector corporations, violation of the constitution emanating from his cabinet, the unchanging number of dirt poor Filipinos, mini revolt in Zamboanga, delayed response and rehab in calamity stricken areas, kid gloves for P Noy’s errant appointees.” Then I asked, “is he abetting it, is it going unabated under lost control or gross misgovernance?”
Without doing and even claiming an atom-to-atom, molecule-to-molecule or as pundits will say apple-to-apple broad comparison I would like to encapsulate here the results of the recent (September 26-29 published in Rappler) SWS survey. Those results which I consider as partly symmetrical to my rating of 7 are as follows:
Aquino government was rated “very good” in only one issue, which was helping disaster victims (+52), got “good” net ratings for 8 other issues (helping the poor, +44; foreign relations, +43; defending territorial rights, +42; developing science and technology, +42; climate change preparation, +41; providing enough electric supply, +41; promoting welfare of OFWs, +39; and transport, +36).
What about the score of 3 PNoy missed in a perfect score of 10? The SWS survey said:
The government got “moderate” ratings for 6 issues (reconciliation with communist rebels, +28; reconciliation with Moro rebels, +27; terrorism, +23; jobs, +21; crime, +14; and eradicating graft and corruption, +14); and got a “neutral” rating for 3 issues (hunger, -5; inflation, -7; and ensuring oil firms don’t take advantage of oil prices, -7). A “poor” rating was reached on the administration’s failure to resolve the Maguindanao massacre issue (-36).
I am and I think everyone can be 100% certain that President Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III CANNOT significantly change those issues under his deficient 3 rating within the remaining period (19 months) of his mandate. Not even man of steel Superman will have the power and guts to do that; which brings me to the title of this piece: NO SECOND TERM FOR PNOY BUT A NEW OPEN ENDED MANDATE, until the time his bosses the people allowed him to leave or when they in parliament VOTED HIM OUT OF OFFICE. Now you can read my almost obsolete piece written in late October.
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I promise to rake Noynoy’s performance over the coals of scrutiny for this second part of a penned monologue. While waiting for the coals to flame up into scorching heat, let me digress a bit by looking at the wider canvass of recent events in the Philippines.
It looks to me the Philippines is now undergoing some kind of wide ranging turmoil which is sublime, seems more than the classic moral reformation which happened in Europe after the dark ages of feudalism and monarchic excesses. The Philippines I think is now in the throes of a social upheaval probably the very first in the world’s second millennium.
What’s this nonsense of a social upheaval as what political pundits will surely ask? Think of key events during the decade: the soiled reputation of two former presidents, jailed, pardoned, arrested and hospital-jailed; a military general and former secretary of several departments committing suicide; expelled from office: one chief justice, another justice of an anti-corruption court; three senators of the realm languishing in socially deodorized jails; the vice president currently under heavy mortar fire from truth seekers; dirty big business anxious with their back on the wall. The process is an exercise of political will, a Lazarus of dead political testicles; the outcome is meaningful social change infecting the entire detergent resistant fabric of society. In fine, just two words: SOCIAL UPHEAVAL.
Just to let it happen slow-by-slow, little-by-little by the sole power that can derail or stop a social upheaval is heroism enough. But to have the courage to push it to completion by using the sword is like being an Alexander the Great living to his old age and retirement. But knowing PNoy and his past and current political record, to the impatience of his bosses, to the delight of his detractors, credit remains his alone in starting Tuwid na Daan (Straight Path) which he could perhaps reach only third of the way at the end of his term.
The term or time just run out on Socrates of Athens, Alexander of Macedon, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mahatma Mahondas Gandhi, Andres Bonifacio, Manuel L. Quezon, and Monching Magsaysay. In each of their own way, they have just completed noble missions or had been stopped in midstream when their term or time ended.
Given its particular history and peculiar culture that seem to cancel out the use of the guillotine, the likes the American Civil War, the killing fields of Cambodia, the genocide in Rwanda, the Arab Spring, etc. The Philippines by this social upheaval is justifiably continuing in earnest the interrupted, disgraced and shamelessly corrupted the purported social transformation ignited by EDSA I.
The Philippines had suffered from the biblical, philosophic and even journalistic belief that History and Culture are the dual determinants of either a country’s decadent or progressive future. The signs emerging in the recent decades are there. Learn from History because its lessons punish the clueless when bad history repeats itself. Culture is a powerful alibi if not a political excuse for records of failure to rectify obscene underdevelopment.
it is not the few but the multitudes of the powerful majority who loses their power when they believe that only bad history (like Marcos, Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo) repeat itself. It doesn’t come to mind that history of a Magsaysay or a Cory Aquino can happen again. The dumb smart alecky will retort: it’s stupid to think that Magsaysay and Cory Aquino are good history because they know not they are pointing to themselves as culture. Lots more of columnists and opinion writers I have read who criticize than give support suggest History disinclines Noynoy’s continuance in office because in very small ways he is good history. For the social upheaval to succeed, Filipinos need to manage, repeat or create good history; and to courageously change from a proud whole its debauched sub-culture of corruption.
I apologize. I have to exclude large portion of this piece and make it Part Three. The mind waffles, mountains rise and fall, river meanders but just as always ends in the sea, but be assured there is an end to this piece on PNoy’s whatevers. ****
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