SoNA all

Of the 40 promises President Marcos made in last year’s SoNA, at least eight were fulfilled. Which is not necessarily great though it’s not bad either, considering that in this country promises are meant to be broken.

But what exactly is the true state of the nation? Every year, the President reports to us and talks about the economy and the socio-political situation that affects his governance. He also informs us about his policy directions and the specific programs and activities he intends to adopt and implement to confront key challenges and in the process ameliorate our living conditions.

In the case of BBM, he launched last year his Bagong Pilipinas battlecry, which is basically a page he borrowed from his father. In fairness to him, our economy has conservatively improved. In fact, we ended 2023 on a high note with a growth rate of 5.6 percent, which was just shy of the government’s target of 6.0 to 7.0 percent.

This year, the rate has remained the same, pegged at 5.7 during the first quarter, which easily makes the Philippines one of the fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia.

Though he has failed to realize his target of a gross national per capita income of at least US$4,256 and attaining “upper middle income” status by 2024, he was able to convince Congress to pass a number of laws meant to improve the economy, which, among others, include the new Government Procurement Act and the Ease of Paying Taxes.

However, he has failed to sell rice at P20 per kilo which he promised during the campaign. Meanwhile, the monthly average exchange rate for the peso has dropped to 58.3 per dollar.

But like his predecessors, the gains his administration has made so far are merely in the short-term which do not really trickle down to the ordinary Juans.

Why? Because they are driven by unstable indicators like public infrastructure spending and the steady flow of remittances instead of genuine institutional reforms that address corruption.

Just so you know, almost a trillion pesos is consistently lost to corruption, where around 20-25 percent of annual government appropriations go. And this has always been the case because as I always posit, corruption is more of a cultural reality than some collateral nuisance that can be easily abated.

So we shouldn’t blame Marcos per se if he could not fully institute reforms. Those who came before him tried but failed because the issue is a lot more complicated than it seems and is an amalgam of a lot of factors. So embedded is this culture of degeneracy that it would take some time for us to fully extricate ourselves from this mess.

In the meantime, let us hope the President would continue to exert efforts to putting his money where his mouth is and make sure his pronouncements would not be reduced to mere rhetoric, just like the 10 thousand pesos Sen. Cayetano promised during the campaign.

Anyway, this is the same Peter that betrayed the Lord (Allan Velasco) of Congress, except nobody heard the rooster crow.