SONA: Making Sense of Arroyo’s Goodbye

How to make sense of Mrs. Arroyo’s speech yesterday? Everybody was waiting for her to drop the ultimate bombshell—announce that she’ll be stepping down from power come June 2010. And she did, although most did not believe what she said, despite both her greedy husband and son validating it. I think people are wary of this because Mrs. Arroyo once fooled us with that infamous 2003 Rizal Day pronouncement. It would now be very hard indeed for Mrs. Arroyo to convince most Filipinos that she meant well.

Obviously, her almost nine years in power brought some improvements in the lives of ordinary Filipinos. This cannot be denied. Her achievements in poverty alleviation, her housing program, her job generation schemes are nothing short of spectacular. Yet, these things are somewhat glossed over by scandals after scandals involving even her very close relatives and friends.

When she said that she’s leaving her office come June 2010, should actually be interpreted as is. There’s nothing that actually prevents us from assuming otherwise. The fact that she’s already the longest serving president means something already. Now, it would be the height of stupidity if she continues on after 2010. Arroyo knows that she’ll be courting disaster if she’ll do that.

We don’t need a categorical, ” yes, I’m not running,” or “no, I’m not extending my term.” phrases for us to believe her. Her statement yesterday is enough. We don’t need to further elaborate on it nor ask more than what she can actually give us. Now, it is but natural for us to expect that she honors this. If she reneges on this again, she knows that she can never go back to those thoughts of a peaceful retirement. That would forever be a destabilizing situation.

State of the Nation Address 2009: Arroyo is stepping down daw

Thousands braved the rains and marched at the Congressional avenue in Quezon City. Many young people were there. Of course, some senators, congressmen and old faces. They were all waiting for Mrs. Arroyo who came in about 3:33 pm. Wearing a symbolic puschia dress, Mrs. Arroyo came prepared with about an hour’s speech. And as expected, she told us a litany of accomplishments and wasted no time on lambasting her political detractors. A trademark of Gloria.

Crit­ics of Mrs. Glo­ria Macapagal-Arroyo say her State of the Nation address (SONA) was noth­ing but self-serving state­ments meant to paint a rosy pic­ture of our sit­u­a­tion. When Mrs. Arroyo said we had the high­est Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) per­cent­ages in his­tory, one or two would counter and say that a few noticed it. Sure enough, stats would show that the num­ber of poor peo­ple increased, due pos­si­bly to lay­offs after sev­eral multi­na­tional com­pa­nies closed shop and those small and medium-sized enter­prises, par­tic­u­larly of the export kind, shut their fac­to­ries down.  Many Over­seas Fil­ipino Work­ers (OFW) went back here, vic­tim­ized by a wors­en­ing global finan­cial meltdown.

After sev­eral pre­dic­tions that the coun­try would go the way of Argentina, sur­pris­ingly, we’re still stand­ing on our own two feet. Sin­ga­pore, Japan, Korea, Thai­land, Malaysia, Indone­sia and China are all reg­is­ter­ing neg­a­tive growth. The last time that I checked, the Philip­pine econ­omy is still kick­ing ass with 2 – 3% per­cent pos­i­tive growth in quar­ters. We’re still grow­ing after 33 quarters.

Let’s admit that there are prob­a­bly some good things that Mrs. Arroyo is doing for us to stay in this sit­u­a­tion. Yes, about 12million Fil­ipinos remain poor. Yet, 700,000 Fil­ipino fam­i­lies (25 mil­lion Fil­ipinos) fed and pro­vided emer­gency assis­tance by way of the poverty-alleviation pro­gram and the stim­u­lus pack­age. And the increas­ing pop­u­la­tion growth is sim­ply too hard a prob­lem to solve.

Yes, there are still class­rooms to be con­structed. And yes, there are still roads to be built and bridges too.

What Mrs. Arroyo just told the nation now is very clear — there’s still some work to do, seri­ous ones that need very close atten­tion from the pres­i­dent. When some crit­ics and even one ally remarked that Mrs. Arroyo is still not step­ping down yet, they’re right. Mrs. Arroyo is still not hang­ing out her gloves yet because her man­date allows her to still work some stuff until June 2010.

Is it really nec­es­sary for us to hear those spe­cific words of “yes, I’ll step down” and ” no, I’ll not seek another term or run for Con­gress in 2010″? Obvi­ously, we’re not that stu­pid or naive. Mrs. Arroyo already told us that she is not plan­ning to extend her term beyond the con­sti­tu­tion­ally man­dated limit. Talks about mar­tial law or state of emer­gency are just wild talk, imag­in­ings. It’s quite under­stand­able that peo­ple would think that way prior to the SONA. Now that she already told the peo­ple that she’s leav­ing office after June 2010, that is, I think, already fair enough for us to just go ahead of our lives and leave her alone.

Yes, alone. I believed her when she says that there are so many things left to do. Inher­it­ing a gov­ern­ment with a 500 bil­lion peso debt is not easy. Leav­ing office with a US$ 7 bil­lion reserves is com­mend­able, to say the least. Giv­ing homes to about 1.8 mil­lion Fil­ipino fam­i­lies within a span of nine years is noth­ing to sneeze at. And gen­er­at­ing one mil­lion jobs per year while your econ­omy sucks, is noth­ing short of a miracle.

Over­seas remit­tances are increas­ing instead of slow­ing down. Roads and bridges con­tinue to be built. There’s no halt in efforts to pro­fes­sion­al­ize the bureau­cracy, with some sug­ges­tions of revis­ing the char­ter of the Cen­tral Bank and cre­at­ing a Depart­ment of ICT. Yes, Prof. David is right — these mea­sures are not direct answers to the ques­tions of increas­ing poverty, of unem­ploy­ment or what have you. But, I have a ques­tion though – what is? These efforts are meant to enhance the cur­rent sys­tem and at least make stop gaps to avert a pos­si­ble sys­temic melt­down. They are not imme­di­ate solu­tions. They are strate­gic. If we always expect tac­ti­cal solu­tions to age-old prob­lems, surely, there would never be any time when we would say that every­thing is already in order. For we ask the impossible.

If we say that Mrs. Arroyo failed to quell insur­gency like what she promised, we are again, ask­ing for the impos­si­ble. The insur­gency is an inher­ited prob­lem. I believed her when she said she wants peace in Min­danao. And I believed her when she prayed for Social­ists to turn a new leaf. Because that’s really all we can expect from her, and pos­si­bly even her successor.

The prob­lem really is we expect Mrs. Arroyo to churn out mir­a­cles after mir­a­cles, when we all know that it is this decay­ing demo­c­ra­tic sys­tem that is caus­ing the prob­lem. How can you do good things when the very sys­tem pre­vents or hin­ders you from actu­ally mak­ing it? We expect Arroyo to dras­ti­cally change things when we know even then that this is impos­si­ble under a decrepit system.

We expect mir­a­cles to hap­pen when we just sit down and let her do all the work while we wait for her to fail so that we can boast that “oh, see, we’re right.” It’s time for us to help her fin­ish the work she vowed to accom­plish come 2010. As both Sen­a­tor Enrile and Speaker Nograles said, his­tory would judge Mrs. Arroyo more kindly after all the dust has set­tled down. I believe them. In her last remain­ing months in office, time for us to recon­sider and think that change is impos­si­ble if it’s just one or two doing the work. Time for us all to shut up and do some seri­ous nation-building.

Last SONA of Gloria–12,000 cops and 1 million lies?

Ops, baka mahulog

People here in the Philippines are anxious about the future. A few days from now, Mrs. Arroyo will be giving her last State of the Nation Address (SONA). Many people say, her speech would not be the last. In fact, that would be the start of formal political hostilities among various groups here. Former speaker Joe de Venecia Jr. thinks she’ll still do some nasty and machiavellian tactics to stay in power. Others hint she may be using even the anti-drugs issue to force militarization in the Philippines.

Three days after her SONA, Mrs. Arroyo would be preparing for her visit in the States, which is neither a state nor a working visit. What it is, is well, the White House is wont to say. Surely, Mrs. Arroyo would use the SONA to present a rosy picture of what’s happening here. If she thinks she can fool Barack Obama, she may be in for a surprise. Recently, CIA Chief Leon Panetta had a briefing with his counterparts here and his colleagues at the US embassy.

Opposition groups are preparing for their biggest showing in Philippine history. Since yesterday, countless rallies and demonstrations have been waged. That’s why, authorities are worried. National Capital Region Police Chief Director Roberto Rosales, who is being groomed to replace PNP Chief Jesus Verzosa, is fielding 12,000 cops to “repulse” anti-Arroyo groups. Overkill right? People really don’t know why cops would secure such a place as Congress against the people. And what it is about Arroyo’s speech that is so incendiary or so sensitive that Arroyo needs almost half of the entire NCRPO police force to secure? Takot ba sila that people might rise in revolt because Mrs. Arroyo would again be lying about the state of affairs here in the Philippines.

CIA Chief avoiding US senate probe?

Leon Panetta shaking hands with Philippine leader

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief Leon Panetta met Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for 20 minutes yesterday. The statement from the palace says they discussed on how to strengthen cooperation on counter-terrorism. But, is that the only thing they discussed? That’s what I’m trying to figure out since I started drinking my morning barako coffee.

Malacanang has kept the details of the visit secret. That’s a matter of national security. Yet, this courtesy call means nothing, actually. What is important were those briefings Panetta attended with defense and intelligence officials of the Philippine government and of course, the unbiased assessment of Panetta’s men working inside the US embassy.

For sure, Panetta’s visit is a message to Mrs. Arroyo. This is the same tactic employed by the US in dealing with Mexican president Felipe Calderon. Prior to Barack Obama’s 12-hour visit, US defense and security officials visited the Mexican government first, voicing their concerns over Calderon’s inability to address drugs and arms smuggling. Surprisingly, the timed release of Eugenio Vagni during Panetta’s visit shows that those “terrorists” in Jolo are nothing but government agents. If these are really terrorists, then, they should have beheaded Vagni to humiliate the Philippine government and send a strong message to the US. But, they did’nt do it. This validates earlier news that these so-called Al-qaeda terrorists are nothing but military agents.

Or Panetta just found a convenient excuse to avoid a Senate probe over alleged CIA lying before the American people? The Senate wants to probe on the CIA activities during the Bush administration. Panetta, some US analysts is avoiding the probe. Why?

Barack Obama doing a Nixon in Philippines?

Why Mr. Obama? Why?

The US Embassy just announced that US President Barack Obama has invited Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to the White House. Arroyo will be the first Southeast Asian leader to formally visit Obama at the White House. The visit will be three days after Arroyo’s last State of the Nation Address in July 27.

CIA Chief Leon Panetta mentioned the invitation to Mrs. Arroyo personally. Panetta made a brief stop-over in the country today to discuss security and counter-terrorism matters with Mrs. Arroyo. He leaves tonight, after meeting Mrs. Arroyo this afternoon.

The White House statement that announced the invitation said the two leaders will be “an opportunity to discuss ways to enhance US-Philippine cooperation on critical global issues including counter-terrorism and climate change, as well as further the traditionally strong alliance and bond between our nations.”

This is most perplexing, since a few days back, Obama decided not to visit Kenya, the country of his father, due to its alleged human rights record and increasing repression against its citizens. Obama even gave a speech entitled ” A New Moment of Promise”, a veritable rebuke of repressive regimes and laying the predicate for America’s supposed role in upholding human rights. Now, Obama wants to be visited by Southeast Asia’s most vilified and most hated head of State? Why?

What is so important to discuss? Is Obama so concerned with the rising human rights violations in the Philippines that he needs to hear it first from Arroyo, the main promoter of chaos and disorder in this country? What are the things that Obama needs to personally hear from Arroyo? Her commitment to stop bombing her own people and just fade away from the political scene after June 30,2010? Is he thinking that he can still work his magic around Arroyo and convince her to “stand down” and honor political commitments for the elections?

Or, there’s something very worrisome in the Mindanao area that they need to discuss? Why is it so urgent and so sudden? Was it to personally send to Mrs. Arroyo Washington’s concern with the worsening peace and order situation in the volatile Bangsamoro region? Or the possibility of again, opening talks for the formalization of forward bases in the South in the Western Mindanao command and an assurance from Arroyo that the Philippines will respect the security pact between the two countries?

Personally, I am totally disappointed, nay, disgusted by the decision of Obama. Is Obama doing a Richard Nixon in this one, giving his blessing for the perpetuation of another dictatorship? This is nuts. Honestly, Mrs. Arroyo is just 11 months away from retirement. There’s nothing to gain anymore from meeting Arroyo. After the SONA, Mrs. Arroyo’s role is just act as a transition leader. Meeting her would amount to nothing, except if the US wants to maintain a looming presence in peace talks between the MILF and the government?