Counter SONA by Rep. Edcel Lagman Aug 1

8/6/2019 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.

Counter SONA by Rep. Edcel Lagman Aug 1

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