Download - Counter SONA by Rep. Edcel Lagman Aug 1
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OF SYMBOLIC GOVERNANCEAND ZERO SCORECARD(Counter-SONA delivered by
Minority Leader Edcel C. Lagman on 01 August 2011)
With her great nobility and tolerant accommodation of
differing views, I am certain that the late President Corazon
C. Aquino will not mind my delivering the Minoritys Counter
SONA today, on the occasion of her 2nd death anniversary.
The Minority was ready with its counter-SONA last
Tuesday, the very day after the Presidents second State of
the Nation Address. However, on Tuesday and Wednesday
last week session was suspended due to inclement weather.
Now, a week after the President delivered his SONA,
almost everybody has made his assessment either for,
against or ambivalent.
Consequently, this counter-SONA may appear anti-
climactic, repetitious or just for the record.
It is not. Considering the constitutional import and
national significance of the SONA and what it ought to
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encompass, any serious assessment is never stale and will
always be seasonable.
The Minority compliments the President for elevating thebanning of the irritating wang-wang to a national symbol of
good governance and probity in public office. But a symbol is
a mere cosmetic trapping if commitment and performance
are wanting.
It took the President one year to extrapolate the
meaning of wang-wang to include errant entitlements and
corrupt practices. It is a way of justifying an inordinately
simplistic approach to overridingly serious problems. It is a
play on words and symbols which attract popular attention
but detract from a patriotic vision.
The President embarked on an electoral campaign of
symbols like matuwid na daan at kung walang corrupt,
walang mahirap. He then pursues symbolic governance by
using wang-wang as his shibboleth in the same manner that
a Porsche is a symbol of flaunting wealth and power, and
KKK is symbolic of bad and abusive governance.
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Of course there is completely nothing wrong with
banning the use ofwang-wangs, but the Presidency must be
above symbols. It should pursue concrete plans and viable
visions. It should be an exemplar of competence andindustry. It should be the compass for national direction. It
should be the propeller for growth and development. The
people deserve no less.
I do not speak solely for the noisy Minority, as we were
categorized earlier by the President, who also said we are
expected to differ from and oppose him.
I articulate and echo the sentiments, despairs and
criticisms of ordinary people in the margins of society, of
corporate magnates in the sanctuary of their boardrooms, of
mentors and students in the independence of the academe,
of Overseas Filipino Workers in the modern salt mines of
alien masters, of landless tillers aspiring for parcels of earth
to call their own, of human rights victims and desaparecidos
in unmarked graves waiting for elusive justice and end to
impunity, of political prisoners wrongly incarcerated to stifle
dissent, and of the masses of our people whom the President
patronizingly calls his bosses.
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In last years SONA, the President had a triple agenda on
(1) legislative priorities requiring the enactment of seven
urgent measures; (2) what appeared to be an economic
program exemplified by the three-Ps on Public-PrivatePartnership and (3) governance centerpiece on anti-
corruption campaign.
Unfortunately, the President scored zero as in zero in
his triple agenda.
Not one of the seven priority legislative measures has
been enacted into law. The ill-fated seven are still
languishing in congressional committees. They are the bills
on: (1) Fiscal Responsibility; (2) Anti-Trust; (3) National Land
Use; (4) Amendments to the Procurement Law; (5)
Amendments to the National Defense Act of 1935; (6)
Whistle-Blowers; and (7) Strengthening the Witness
Protection Program.
The 1935, 1973 and 1987 Constitutions have uniform
provisions wherein the President is mandated to deliver his
State of the Nation Address (SONA) before the Legislature,
not from Malacaang Palace or Plaza Miranda. The import
and implications of these common provisions are:
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1) The SONA must contain the Presidents legislative
agenda and priority policy pronouncements for enactment by
the Congress; and
2)The President must follow-through the concretization
of his administrations priority measures and policies in
appropriate legislation by the Congress.
The President failed to follow-through the enactment of
not even one of his priority bills despite the overwhelming
number of Aquino allies and partisans in the Congress,
particularly in this Chamber, who are ready to fast-track
urgent or priority measures of the administration at the
Presidents behest, like in the speedy enactment of Republic
Act No. 10153 postponing the ARMM elections and Republic
Act No. 10149 on the GOCC Governance Act, both of which
are pending adjudication before the Supreme Court for
having been challenged as unconstitutional. These two
enactments cannot yet be used to improve the Presidents
scorecard.
This lack of follow-through reflects the Presidents
sluggish work habits. After the applause has subsided, he
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conveniently forgets that he has to roll up his sleeves and
get actual work done.
The President added in his second SONA more prioritybills. We hope he can revisit the status of these measures
before they become candidates for the archives.
Although the President did not spell out in last years
SONA his administrations economic road map, in the same
manner that he did not elaborate on the Philippine
Development Plan (PDP) in this years SONA as it has neither
been approved nor submitted to the Legislative-Executive
Development Advisory Council (LEDAC), he nonetheless gave
us a glimpse last year of what may be his economic vision by
extolling the beneficial prospects of his Public-Private
Partnerships (PPP).
In his 2010 SONA, the President announced: No matter
how massive the deficit is that may keep us from paying for
these list of needs, I am heartened because many have
already expressed renewed interest and confidence in the
Philippines. Our solution: public-private partnerships.
Although no contract has been signed yet, I can say that on-
going talks with interested investors will yield fruitful
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outcomes. There are some who have already shown interest
and want to build an expressway from Manila that will pass
through Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, until the end
of the Cagayan Valley without the government having tospend a single peso.
He then continued: Some had this proposition: they will
rent the Navy Headquarters in Roxas Boulevard and the
Naval Station in Fort Bonifacio. They will take care of the
funding necessary to transfer the Navy Headquarters to
Camp Aguinaldo. Immediately, we will be given 100 million
dollars. Furthermore, they will give us a portion of their
profits from their businesses that would occupy the land they
will rent. In short, we will meet our needs without spending,
and we will also earn.
And then he concluded: There have already been many
proposals from local to foreign investors to provide for our
various needs. From these public-private partnerships, our
economy will grow and every Filipino will be the beneficiary.
There are so many sectors that could benefit from these.
The foregoing glowing scenario has dissipated. What has
ensued instead is the foreign businessmens dismal
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disinterest in investing in the country because of the Aquino
administrations foot-dragging and inefficient preparation of
blueprints and implementing regulations. One year later, not
a single PPP project has been bid out.
The recent ASEAN business survey showed that majority
of foreign investors would refuse to invest in the Philippines.
They have been dismayed by the current administrations
lethargic leadership, not to mention the abrogation of
international consummated contracts which have passed
government standards and scrutiny, for which the Philippines
is now sued by foreign contractors before tribunals abroad
for enormous amounts of damages.
Volumes of verbiage and sound bites have been wasted
in propagandizing the Aquino administrations centerpiece
agenda against corruption. Until now, the light at the end of
the tunnel flickers like a distant beacon. After one year, not a
single complaint has been filed at the instance of vociferous
Presidential graft busters. Of course, no conviction has been
secured.
The President and his lawyers wasted one year in vainly
convincing the public and the Supreme Court on the
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contrived validity of the Philippine Truth Commission which
was created by the Presidents first Executive Order and was
afflicted with congenital constitutional infirmities.
A day after the Presidents SONA, the Supreme Court
junked with finality the Truth Commission as a patent
violation of the constitutionally enshrined equal protection
clause because its creation was a venture in partisan
vendetta and a vehicle for selective retribution since its
consuming motivation was solely the persecution and
prosecution of officials of the immediate past administration.
The Presidents centerpiece agenda has likewise
floundered. In fact, the Philippine corruption rating worsened
to 8.9 from 8.25 in a scale of one to 10 in a survey covering
the period from November 2010 to February 2011 which was
conducted by the Hong Kong-based Political Economic Risk
Consultancy, Ltd. (PERC).
The anti-corruption campaign of the President
concentrates on high profile cases involving billions of pesos
and national figures. Mind-boggling scandals are singled out
for media to highlight as headline material. But these
exposs are peripheral to the lives of the multitude.
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The corruption drive need not always be spectacular.
What the common people would surely appreciate is a
balanced campaign which must also combat and eradicatethose petty acts of corruption and abuse that bedevil their
everyday lives. This may not project the President as an
indefatigable crusader against venalities, but it will
immensely benefit his unheralded bosses.
Incidentally, it is a record that the first three Executive
Orders of President Aquino and several of his subsequent
issuances had been contested before the Supreme Court. It
is also on record that two of the early measures certified as
priority by President Aquino are being questioned before the
Supreme Court.
The first is R.A. 10153 postponing the ARMM elections
and authorizing the President to appoint officers-in-charge.
Four petitions are pending before the Supreme Court seeking
the nullity of this law for being offensive to the Constitution.
The petitions assailing the constitutionality of this law have
been set for oral argument on August 9, 2011. The second is
R.A. No. 10149 or the GOCC Governance Act of 2011 which
is also in the furnace of judicial scrutiny.
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It is valid to ask why there are numerous challenges to
the Executive Orders and Republic Acts under the Aquino
administration. Are these controverted issuances andMalacaang-sponsored statutes crafted in the vacuum of
inexperience or incompetence? Is there a cavalier treatment
of the rule of law? Are improvident shortcuts the favored
path?
With respect to the autonomy of the ARMM, the
Constitution mandates two safeguards: (1) regional
executive and legislative officials of ARMM shall be
elective and representative of the constituent political
units (Sec. 18 of Article X of the 1987 Constitution), not
appointive as in officers-in-charge; and (2) the President
shall exercise general supervision over autonomous
regions to ensure that laws are faithfully executed (Sec. 16
of the same Article X), not control like voiding the actions of
OICs who are accountable to the appointing power.
The legislated safeguards are: (1) periodic regular and
popular elections; (2) holdover of elected incumbents until
their successors are elected and qualified; (3) any
amendment to the Organic Act should be approved by 2/3
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vote of the House and the Senate voting separately in order
to be valid; and (4) the amendment to the Organic Act
becomes effective only after it is ratified in a plebiscite.
Indeed, all safeguards for ARMM autonomy have been
derogated. All guaranties have been sacrificed at the altar of
partisanship and expediency. The Aquino administration is
hell-bent in slaying ARMM autonomy. Only the Supreme
Court can avert a requiem for ARMM.
The scandalous grants of huge salaries, allowances and
perks to officials and personnel of some GOCCs cannot be
tolerated and must be rectified. Nonetheless, the offending
GOCCs constitute only a small percentage of the total GOCCs
which could reach several hundreds.
Indeed, culpability must be determined after due
process, and the guilty dismissed or disciplined and ordered
to return the excessive benefits. However, it is axiomatic
that a wrong cannot be righted by another wrong.
The GOCC Governance Act of 2011 is a compendium
of sweeping, wayward, illegal and unconstitutional solutions
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to a problem which is grave but not widespread. It is
indiscriminate wrath against the entire GOCC sector.
This infirm statute is a shortcut and ill-conceived remedywhich punishes both the guilty and innocent without due
process; violates the constitutionally guaranteed security of
tenure of GOCC officials; constitutes undue delegation and
abdication of legislative powers; and supplants the
jurisdiction of the constitutionally created independent Civil
Service Commission. Perforce, this Malacaang-inspired law
has to be exorcised and cleansed of its multiple aberrations.
Moreover, the timing of the fast-tracked enactment is
suspect. The provision which pre-terminates the terms of
office of CEOs and trustees/directors of GOCCs as of June 30,
2011 coincides with or is proximate to the expiration just last
May of the one-year employment ban on candidates who lost
during the 2010 elections. Now, there will be a surfeit of
vacancies in the GOCCs to accommodate the avalanche of
jobless partisans of the Aquino administration.
The Aquino administration must not defy settled
jurisprudence and show contempt for the rule of law because
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these wayward actions are roadblocks to the matuwid na
daan.
The President complimented the Congress for passingon time the General Appropriations Act of 2011. The
President said: nagpakitang-gilas ang Kongreso sa pagpasa
ng budget bago matapos ang taon. Dahil dito, nasimulan
agad ang mga proyekto at hindi na inabot ng tag-ulan.
Again, the President is less than candid in his report.
While it is true that Congress passed the 2011 budget before
the end of 2010, Malacaang releases came in trickles, if at
all, so much so that the rainy season has arrived but funding
allocations for various infrastructure projects are pending
release.
Even the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF)
for congressional districts, which constitutes a small portion
of the budget, has not been fully released seven months
after the enactment of the GAA. The victims are the
constituents of the members of the Minority and some vocal
and independent-minded legislators belonging to the
Majority coalition. Meanwhile, thousands of deserving
scholars may be unable to pursue college and vocational
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education and thousands of indigent patients are deprived of
free medical care, the funds for which are sourced from the
PDAF.
The uneven treatment is not limited to the disparity in
releases between the Majority and Minority. The
discrimination extends to the Minority membership where
some get releases and others do not. This smacks of a
divide-and-rule strategy reminiscent of the colonial
masters by driving a wedge within the ranks of the
opposition.
And was it not The President, when he was a Senator,
who authored Senate Bill No. 3121 against the unbridled
power of the President to impound approved budgetary
allocations?
It is no wonder that our economic growth slowed to 4.9%
in the first quarter of this year from 8.4% last year, which the
National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) has attributed
to lackluster government spending. If GNP instead of GDP
figures are used, economic growth was slower at 3.6%
compared to 11.5% last year.
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Other standard economic indicators are far from
encouraging. While the unemployment rate fell from 8% in
April 2010 to 7.2% in April 2011, the underemployment rate
rose from 17.8% to 19.4%. The trade deficit, which measuresthe excess of imports over exports, increased from $957
million in April 2010 to $1.2 billion in April 2011. The inflation
rate was 5.2% in June 2011; in June 2010, the inflation rate
was only 3.6%. Consequently, the purchasing power of the
peso fell from 83% in June 2010 to 79% in June 2011. This
means that compared to 2006, the base year, the peso was
worth only P.83 in June 2010 and was worth even less at P.79
in June 2011.
Even more worrisome are the figures for the Leading
Economic Indicator (LEI), a quarterly composite economic
index jointly developed by the NSCB and the NEDA to
provide advance information on the direction of the countrys
economic activity/performance in the short run. In six
consecutive quarters from the fourth quarter of 2009, the LEI
grew steadily. It was only in the last quarter, from April to
June this year that the LEI slid, strongly suggesting a
slowdown in economic activity/performance. It is hoped that
the slide is worrisome but not ominous.
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An estimated P30 billion has been lying in the
governments coffers waiting to be used for meaningful and
urgent projects. Some private banks have downscaled their
growth projections because of the administrations anemicperformance in pump-priming the economy.
What is the budget for if it will not be used for the
purposes requested by the Executive and appropriated by
Congress? It does not exist to generate a cosmetic fiscal
surplus and contrived savings to contain artificially the deficit
at the expense of growth and development. Perforce,
appropriations must be released with reasonable alacrity and
utilized judiciously.
The fact remains that the country needs to invest in
physical and social infrastructure if we are to move forward
or simply sustain our growth. Unfortunately, what this
administration has achieved is an underspent budget a
knee-jerk reaction to fiscal challenges.
Forced savings are like drugs locked up in a medicine
cabinet while an epidemic rages.
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The President also neglected to address the pressing
concerns of two of his largest constituencies, the laborers,
both domestic and overseas, and the farmers, including
agrarian reform beneficiaries.
Even if the 7.4% unemployment rate in the first quarter
this year slipped to 7.2% in the 2nd quarter, such meager
improvement did not liberate a sizeable number of
unemployed which is still close to a staggering 11.3 million
jobless.
What is crucial is that (1) those who are unemployed be
given the opportunity to secure jobs; (2) those who are
already employed are assured of security of tenure and a
living wage; (3) those who are underemployed are fully
employed; and (4) those employed overseas must be fully
protected and once they return or are repatriated jobs and
livelihood are available to them.
Although these labor targets cannot be achieved with
alacrity, the President must have a labor agenda to
expeditiously and eventually attain these objectives.
Unfortunately, the President has no labor plan or has failed
to disclose one.
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The test of the Presidents fealty to his bosses in
Hacienda Luisita is for his kin to distribute the landholding to
qualified farmworkers, and not allocate parchments ofdiluted shares of stocks.
This is the matuwid na daan in agrarian reform because
(1) the only constitutional mandated mode is actual land
distribution; (2) the stock distribution option (SDO) under
Section 31 of R.A. 6657, the original Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Law (CARL) had already expired more than two
decades ago; and 3) SDO has been repealed and rejected by
the CARPER (R.A 9700) as ruled by the Supreme Court in the
latest Hacienda Luisita Case.
The President and his economic team find no end in
drumbeating the latest credit upgrades of the Philippines.
They conveniently overlook the truism that upgrades are not
achieved overnight. They are the cumulated results of
positive economic reforms and solid fundamentals put in
place by the previous administration to which the present
regime has little contribution absent a viable economic road
map and pending the approval of the Philippine
Development Plan (PDP) which is yet to be submitted to the
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Executive-Legislative Development Advisory Council
(LEDAC).
Rating agencies admit that they only give upgradesafter years of fiscal improvement, and not a few months of
gains like savings which are mostly contrived. Even the
President admits that our upgrade is limited to a non-
investment grade.
The President claimed in his SONA that because of the
CCT, mahigit isandaang libong pamilya, uulitin ko mahigit
isandaang libong pamilya, ang naiaahon natin mula sa
kahirapan kada buwan.
How on earth can a maximum of P1,400 a month per
family-beneficiary liberate more than a hundred thousand
families from poverty every month? The CCT is supposed to
be only one component of the governments poverty
alleviation program precisely because it is not a
comprehensive approach to solving mass poverty. It is a
mere analgesic, and painkillers are purely palliative.
Moreover, whichever way you look at it, the CCT is not
sustainable because it is a dole-out.
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I am certain that the cash dole-outs from the CCT help
lessen the economic strain on so many poor families but to
give CCT is something akin to the powers of a magic potion
by attributing to it the liberation of more than 100,000families monthly from the quagmire of poverty is not only
simplistic. It borders on brazen hyperbole.
Instead of increasing the appropriations for the CCT
program from P21,194,117,000 this year to P39,444,651,000
in 2012, it should be realistically reduced and the
beneficiaries pruned down to the poorest of the poor as
originally intended when it was first implemented in 1997
consistent with the original program in Mexico.
The additional and excess funding should be realigned
to viable livelihood support programs to generate rural
family incomes and to increase the budgets of the education
and health departments which are the allied agencies in the
implementation of CCT.
The conditions for schooling and health care of the
children of beneficiary-families cannot be adequately
complied with without the necessary classrooms and medical
facilities.
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Moreover, since the 2012 General Appropriations Act is
virtually the 2013 election budget, the 86.11% increase in
the CCT funding can easily be transformed into a partisankitty, nay barrel, for the administrations electoral campaign.
An encouraging speck in the bleak scenario of
deteriorating economic and social indicators, which deter
growth and development, is the reported reduction of the
number of Filipino families who suffered involuntary hunger
in the last three months.
The 20.5% or estimated 4.1 million families who
experienced self-rated moderate and severe hunger in March
2011 dropped to 15.1% or leaving a balance of about three
million hunger-stricken families and thereby some one
million families have been reportedly liberated from episodes
of hunger.
The President should not be extremely ecstatic about
this decline. The stark reality is that three million families
still suffer the pangs of hunger. With an average of six
persons per family in the depressed and marginalized
communities, this means that there are 18 million individuals
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or almost 20 percent of 94 million Filipinos who are exposed
to incidents of hunger.
The Aquino administration must realize that there isanother kind of hunger it has to address because man does
not live by bread alone, as Jesus Christ exhorted
millenniums ago.
While the body needs food, the human spirit demands
justice. The dearth of food and the denial of justice have
historically fomented revolutions.
Speaking about the quest for justice, there are in
particular six bills in the House of Representatives seeking to
end impunity for enforced disappearance by criminalizing the
act as a separate offense, distinct from kidnapping, murder,
physical injuries and arbitrary detention, among other
common crimes. The precursors of these bills have been filed
and refilled since 1990 or 21 years ago.
The principal reasons for this proposed legislation of
long gestation are (1) enforced disappearance is committed
by the State or government authorities through its officials or
agents singly or in conspiracy with civilian cohorts; and (2)
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the motive is generally political and the victim is invariably
an activist, dissenter, crusader or a suspected rebel.
Despite repeated claims of the revival of civil libertiesand the resurgence of democratic space, from the Cory
administration to subsequent administrations, including the
current one, no President has prioritized the enactment of an
Anti-Enforced Disappearance law.
Less than four months after President Aquino assumed
office, a delegation of human rights advocates had a one-
hour audience with him in October 2010 purposely to
request that the Anti-Enforced Disappearance bill be
prioritized as an administration measure and the
International Convention for the Protection of All Persons
from Enforced Disappearance be signed and endorsed by the
President to the Senate for ratification.
Up to the second SONA, no concrete and positive
response has been made by the President on the two
measures, despite the personal support of Secretary of
Justice Leila De Lima and Commission on Human Rights
(CHR) Chairperson Loretta Ann Rosales. And not
withstanding that the protection and promotion of human
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rights was an avowed campaign promise of the President
and the Philippines is a three-term member of the United
Nations Human Rights Council.
Meanwhile, the commission of enforced disappearance
remains unabated. The list ofdesaparecidos appears to be
endless and open-ended. Within one year of the Presidents
term, a number of enforced disappearances had been
reported, not to mention politically-related killings which
have remained unsolved.
While we are on the topic of hunger for justice, the day
the SONA was delivered was the first day of the hunger
strike of political prisoners in the country for freedom and
human rights. It is reminiscent of the same protest by the
Presidents father, Ninoy, when he was incarcerated during
martial law. It was gravely disappointing that except for his
endorsement of compensation to the martial law human
rights violations victims, there was no mention of any human
rights agenda in the Presidents SONA, notwithstanding his
being the son of a former political prisoner and his mother
former President Cory Aquinos releasing of political
prisoners with dispatch.
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At the end of the day, what may only remain is the
Presidential wang-wang of 3-Ps ofpromises, propaganda
and palliatives as the President bellows out promises,
drumbeats propaganda and hollers palliatives. The patienceof the Filipinos can be proverbially enduring, but their
eardrums are fragile and their sensibilities cannot be
repeatedly demeaned.
Thank you.