The speech was well-written and well-delivered to much applause. But at the end of the day, how was the substance?
He started off by acknowledging the depths that the nation had sunk to and then proceeded to describe what his administration had done. The President talked lengthily about education and employment, getting testimonials from the graduates of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).
According to P-Noy (as the President is affectionately called as a nod to the Filipino people moniker, Pinoy and his nickname Noynoy), the poverty rate had decreased from 27.9% to 24.9% wherein the three percentage points are equivalent 2.5 million Filipinos who have crossed the poverty line. Well and good. But now that the Philippine population has officially reached 100 million, what does that mean?
A whopping 24,900,000 million Pinoys who are still left languishing in poverty. I, for lack of a better word, 'appreciate' the decrease of poverty in numbers. But whenever I go out of my house, my fellow Filipinos are still all over the street---toddlers peddling sampaguita flowers, adults struggling to eke out a living.
He talked about tax collections, debt management, tourism, labor issues, supposed good governance, the Mindanao rebels, Typhoon Yolanda and a number of issues that his administration could provide an example of the good that they've done. I applaud that. But the truth is, the problems of the Philippines cannot be solved on ONE President's term. Six years? The problem in the country has been ingrained, inscribed, etched in our minds ever since the time of the Spaniards. A relatively young country, we're still trying to shake off the cultural rape of colonial rule, literal rape, and identity rape. If this was the court, we'd be charged with being a willing victim..
But I did appreciate several things that Pnoy pointed out. I love the fact that the country's investment grade status has been upgraded by three of the major world credit rating agencies---Moody's, Fitch, Standard and Poor's. As a fledging start up social entrepreneur myself, this helps paves the way for more entrepreneurs to rise up, which in my humble opinion, the Philippines desperately needs so. An excellent affirmation of this was our hosting of the World Economic Forum on East Asia this year.
Pnoy mentioned about "kickbacks nor overpricing is not condoned" in the context of the Department of Public Works and Highways. It is not condoned---yet it still prevails. I need not mention examples here as any individual Filipino (and I mean any random Pinoy) knows a story of a local municipality or a politician who has skimmed off public funds. We need to get the Freedom of Information Bill (FOI) passed!!
He did not mention any of the green bills, the FOI or the hot pot of politicians that have been involved in the PDAF! We also need serious water governance, which we will feature in this blog in future posts.
What did you think of the President's SONA?
You can read the whole transcript of the speech here.
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