Two years since promising to lift the people from poverty and social abyss through the “daang matuwid,” it seems, as pointed out by a Manila bishop, the journey has reached a dead end. It seems the straight path has become a circuitous route that is only leading the country back to where it started two years ago.
Aside from booting out Chief Justice Renato Corona in an impeachment drama that placed the nation and important legislation on hold for more than three months, President Aquino still has nothing to report to the people in terms of concrete achievements and even partial fulfillment of the many promises he made two years ago, and repeated in his State-of-the-Nation address (SONA) last year.
There is reason the President’s ratings have been dropping continuously since he assumed office at noon of June 30, 2010. His approval rating has dropped from 88 percent in July 2010, just a month after he became president, to just 68 percent in April 2012, meaning his ratings have dropped 20 percent in 19 months.
Apparently, the people whose hopes he had raised to a very high level are beginning to feel the disappointment that comes with unfulfilled promises and unrealized hopes.
Aquino boasts of a 6.4 percent economic growth in the first quarter that was boosted by a sudden surge in government spending during the period that was obviously timed to achieve a high quarterly growth for this month’s SONA. The government obviously cannot sustain this spending surge in the face of the P19.9-billion budget deficit incurred in May.
IBON Foundation, a respected economic think tank, says there is no economic gain to speak of. IBON Foundation executive director Sonny Africa said that reports on an improving economy do not reflect the reality that tens of millions of Filipinos remain poor and have to struggle daily to earn a living.
Africa said the most important sectors of the economy slowed substantially in the first quarter. Agriculture growth rate dropped from 4.4 percent last year to just 1.0 percent early this year, while industry also decreased to 4.9 percent from 7.3 percent last year. He said these sectors are supposed to create the most jobs, and should have the greatest productivity and be the main drivers of economic growth.
Africa said that it is thus not surprising that the country’s unemployment problem remains despite supposedly sound fundamentals. According to IBON estimates on National Statistics Office (NSO) data, the total number of unemployed and underemployed Filipinos has increased by 780,000 in the last two years, from 10.9 million in April 2010 to 11.7 million in April 2012—consisting of 4.4 million unemployed and 7.3 million underemployed. While the unemployment rate over the same period fell from 11.4 percent to 10.3 percent this was more than offset by rising under-employment that rose from 17.8% to 19.3 percent. Part-time work now accounts for 43 percent of jobs in the economy, or 16.2 million out of the 37.8 million employed. All these indicate that the quality of jobs being generated is deteriorating, Africa said.
The economic bottom line is that the administration’s economic policies and social amelioration programs have not made even a small dent on the country’s poverty level and have, in fact, only widened the gap between the rich and the poor. While the number of billionaires in the Philippines and their net worth have increased, the number of Filipinos who rated themselves as poor have also risen to 55 percent in March (roughly 11.1 million people) and 51 percent in June (still above 10 million people) as compared to only 26.5 percent in 2009 during the last full year of Aquino’s predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
It seems Aquino’s solution to poverty is the continuation of Arroyo’s dole-out program, now called Conditional Cash Transfer, that has only sank the people deeper into a culture of mendicancy. Instead of creating jobs, Aquino has increased the CCT budget from P10 billion in 2010, to P21 billion in 2011, and to P34 billion in 2012. He has now proposed to increase this to P45 billion in 2013. But even this is opening doors to graft and corruption as it is suspected that the amount was being raised to enable political allies to dip into the fund for campaign purposes in 2013, just as Arroyo’s agricultural programs were abused.
On Aquino’s repeated vows of “justice for all” and of promoting human rights, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) scored Aquino for his failure to hold accountable security forces responsible for serious abuses since he assumed power two years ago. The group said that the Aquino government has not successfully prosecuted a single case of extrajudicial killing or enforced disappearance, including those committed during his presidency.
The rights group, in its 2011 report No Justice Just Adds to the Pain,” has documented 10 cases of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances since Aquino took office. No one was arrested in any of these cases, and the three “disappeared” people remain missing.
“President Aquino has not lived up to his promises to bring those responsible for serious abuses to justice,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director of HRW. “Concrete measures – rather than more promises – are needed now.”
One only has to remember that the Maguindanao massacre trial has remained stalled while witnesses are being killed one after another, and that Gen. Jovito Palparan, who has been charged with various human rights violations, has remained at large.
When he assumed office, Aquino promised to push population control, but has not even declared the long-pending Reproductive Health Bill as priority legislation. He promised transparency but refuses to support the Freedom of Information Act and has even blamed media for his declining popularity.
Even in his avowed campaign against corruption, it is obvious that his repeated warnings have fallen on deaf ears as smuggling continues to wreak havoc on the economy and on government revenues; jueteng continues to flourish throughout the country, further impoverishing the poor and institutionalizing corruption nationwide; bribery continues to infect the bureaucracy; and the rich and powerful continue to ignore his warning against “wang wang mentality.”
In short, two years after Aquino promised to bring in a new era of reforms, not much has changed. Some will say he still has four years to fulfill his promises, but at this time, there should at least be clear signs that the “daang matuwid” indeed leads to the promise land, and not back to hopelessness and despair.
