BY THE time this comes out, July 26, the state of the nation address of President Aquino would have most surely been delivered.
And all sorts of perfunctory reactions, from his rah-rah boys’ splendid to the opposition’s outrageous, would have as surely made the rounds of media, with commentators and columnists dishing their own cent and dime’s worth to the debate.
As I write this piece on Sunday, I have no way of knowing the least in the President’s SONA.
But given Aquino’s predilection to hitting his predecessor at every and any turn, and with the nascent epiphany of one principal suspect in the Ampatuan massacre, and one discredited Commission on Elections operator building up to Monday’s event, I can assume some certainty that the corruption of the Arroyo administration will serve as the leitmotif of the SONA.
The indictment of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo – if only by publicity at this time – may as well have served as the title of Aquino’s second SONA.
The ouster of Merceditas Gutierrez from the Office of the Ombudsman, a major take-off point, reinforced by the plunder of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office pot.
Moralizing rather than governing, platitudes over programs, motherhood statements glossing over (un)accomplishments, Aquino’s SONA arguably is. Which is not to say that it is the real state of the nation.
As the columnist Dick Pacual of the Philippine Star put it most succinctly: “The true state of the nation is in every Pinoy’s gut.”
To quote Mabalacat native Cong Dick further: “Perception is personal. Government statistics and politicians’ claims are swept away as rubbish when they do not jibe with the abject reality being experienced by the person plied with propaganda.
“The macroview of the economy through the eyes of a sitting politician becomes irrelevant, sometimes even insulting, when it does not conform to the microview of the individual.”
Yeah, right, like the Aquino administration projecting the already less than modest 4.8 percent growth, further falling flat on its face, given the reality of high unemployment rate, the Saudization that is starting to drive thousands of OFWs home, the slowdown in foreign investments caused by unstable, if not wishy-washy, economic policies.
Not to mention government’s utter impotence to check the rise and rise in the pump prices of petroleum products that sparks the increase in the prices of prime commodities.
And still more, just out of the torture chamber: the imposition of value added tax on toll.
The stark reality of more Filipinos falling below the poverty line, finding lesser and lesser staple on the table – rice at P27-P35 per kilo, sardines at P12 a can, is much too much to be glossed over by even the highest platitudes of good, corrupt-less, governance.
Much, too much to get a definitive solution in the P2-billion dole out called Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program which, instead of fulfilling its express mission to eradicate poverty only promotes, and perpetuates mendicancy.
And that’s only for the economy.
Talk peace and order and be confronted by the resurgence of kidnappings in Mindanao, carjackings everywhere, riders-in-tandem assassinations both in the urban and rural areas, the continuous killings of activists and journalists.
Talk education and loom large the school-age kids begging in the streets, if not peddling their very bodies, or working for pittance in sweatshops and the farms.
In school, see the as much as 70 children packed in dilapidated classrooms, if not taking lessons under the trees, sharing one book at a ratio of three-to-one.
So what state of the nation is there for Aquino to report?
Indeed, nothing but his personal state of war with the Arroyos.
