MARKING THE first 100 days in office of a new administration has taken a different tack from its intent.
First practiced in the first of four terms of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Hundred Days referred to his first weeks in office as he battled the Great Depression with a “a flurrry of congressional acts to institute immediate change and keep the nation’s economy from destabilizing.” Among these was the four-day banking holiday which provided the banking institution a respite to recover and reorganize.
It was also within FDR’s first 100 days that the “fireside chats” – the President addressing the whole nation through radio – came into being. The broadcasts raised the confidence of the American people that the Great Depression could be whipped.
In the matter of the first 100 days, from Roosevelt to Benigno Aquino III ranged – as one favorite columnist coined – from the sublime to the paralytic, the latter with no reference at all to the wheelchair-bound FDR.
There is nothing more I could intelligently add to the volume of critiques on Aquino’s “Report kay Boss,” the better columnists, Doronilla for one, having said everything.
I could not pass this chance though to note that Aquino made his first 100 days speech no more than an extension of his inaugural and state-of-the-nation addresses in the aspect of all form and no substance, platitudes rather than policies, and recurrent refrain of damning the Macapagal-Arroyo administration.
Which brings us back to our thought that marking the first 100 days of a new administration has found a different tack from its original intent.
Comparisons, always odious, could not be helped but be invoked in these first-100-days speeches.
As it was with Aquino, so it was too with Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan: ”Ayaw ko pong magbuhat ng sariling bangko nang hindi ko aaminin at pupunahin muna ang ating mga kahinaan. At ayaw ko na rin pong manisi ng ibang tao, lalo na ang nagdaang administrasyon. (I do not want to raise my own chair without first admitting and criticizing my own weaknesses. I do not want to blame other people, especially the previous administration)
Bagamat kailangang may managot sa mga anomalyang naganap, ang anumang problemang nilikha ng nakaraan ay dapat nating harapin, iwasto at tugunan. (But somebody has to answer for the anomalies committed, whatever problem created by the past administration must be faced, corrected and answered).”
So were resurrected anew the P63-million debt with the Kalangitan landfill, the P812-million loan for a city sports complex, power to city hall cut owing to some P20 million unpaid obligations with the Angeles Electric Corp., among others.
So were raised too the improvements over the (non)performance of the past administration: 151 percent increase in the collection of real property tax – over P13 million; 120 percent increase in business tax collections, amounting to P44.6 million; 118 percent in other taxes, to the tune of P5.2 million; 140 percent in permits and licenses, at P5.9 million.
Market collections likewise increased by 154 percent; at the slaughterhouse, 154 percent; transportation, 206 percent; and service user charges, 141 percent.
With all these increases, the abject failure of the past administration to run the city is clear as day; the utter repudiation at the polls of Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno finding absolute justification.
As in Pamintuan’s case, the first-100-day accomplishment of a new administration sets a benchmark of performance even as it serves as a preview to the rest of the days of that administration – a shape of greater things to come for the people.
May the new administration be as enthusiastic to serve the people in its next 900 days as it was in its first 100.
First practiced in the first of four terms of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Hundred Days referred to his first weeks in office as he battled the Great Depression with a “a flurrry of congressional acts to institute immediate change and keep the nation’s economy from destabilizing.” Among these was the four-day banking holiday which provided the banking institution a respite to recover and reorganize.
It was also within FDR’s first 100 days that the “fireside chats” – the President addressing the whole nation through radio – came into being. The broadcasts raised the confidence of the American people that the Great Depression could be whipped.
In the matter of the first 100 days, from Roosevelt to Benigno Aquino III ranged – as one favorite columnist coined – from the sublime to the paralytic, the latter with no reference at all to the wheelchair-bound FDR.
There is nothing more I could intelligently add to the volume of critiques on Aquino’s “Report kay Boss,” the better columnists, Doronilla for one, having said everything.
I could not pass this chance though to note that Aquino made his first 100 days speech no more than an extension of his inaugural and state-of-the-nation addresses in the aspect of all form and no substance, platitudes rather than policies, and recurrent refrain of damning the Macapagal-Arroyo administration.
Which brings us back to our thought that marking the first 100 days of a new administration has found a different tack from its original intent.
Comparisons, always odious, could not be helped but be invoked in these first-100-days speeches.
As it was with Aquino, so it was too with Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan: ”Ayaw ko pong magbuhat ng sariling bangko nang hindi ko aaminin at pupunahin muna ang ating mga kahinaan. At ayaw ko na rin pong manisi ng ibang tao, lalo na ang nagdaang administrasyon. (I do not want to raise my own chair without first admitting and criticizing my own weaknesses. I do not want to blame other people, especially the previous administration)
Bagamat kailangang may managot sa mga anomalyang naganap, ang anumang problemang nilikha ng nakaraan ay dapat nating harapin, iwasto at tugunan. (But somebody has to answer for the anomalies committed, whatever problem created by the past administration must be faced, corrected and answered).”
So were resurrected anew the P63-million debt with the Kalangitan landfill, the P812-million loan for a city sports complex, power to city hall cut owing to some P20 million unpaid obligations with the Angeles Electric Corp., among others.
So were raised too the improvements over the (non)performance of the past administration: 151 percent increase in the collection of real property tax – over P13 million; 120 percent increase in business tax collections, amounting to P44.6 million; 118 percent in other taxes, to the tune of P5.2 million; 140 percent in permits and licenses, at P5.9 million.
Market collections likewise increased by 154 percent; at the slaughterhouse, 154 percent; transportation, 206 percent; and service user charges, 141 percent.
With all these increases, the abject failure of the past administration to run the city is clear as day; the utter repudiation at the polls of Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno finding absolute justification.
As in Pamintuan’s case, the first-100-day accomplishment of a new administration sets a benchmark of performance even as it serves as a preview to the rest of the days of that administration – a shape of greater things to come for the people.
May the new administration be as enthusiastic to serve the people in its next 900 days as it was in its first 100.
