The SoNA post audit

First the best mark: I give President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos an “AAB” for directing Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) to totally dismantle all operations of the Philippines Offshore Gaming Operators or POGO for short. Did I hear Chinese leaders clapping their hands in a standing ovation? That is bad for some members of the Senate for now they will be deprived of free TV and socmed publicity which they had been enjoying gratis et amore in aid of their reelection.

I would have given PBBM a “triple A” except that he gave PAGCOR until the end of the year to wrap up POGO operations. This is another case of “Noynoying” which is how former Vice President Jojo Binay described the sluggishness of President Noynoy Aquino in acting on urgent matters.

Also, he should have announced the dismissal of top PAGCOR officials for allowing the obviously illegal operations of POGOs right under their noses.

If Bamban Mayor Alice Ghuo has to go to jail, these supervising officials must go to the calaboose with her.

Be that as it may, I give Marcos five claps too for his directive to totally ban POGOs.

His discourse on the West Philippines Sea issue was nothing new. We had heard it on a daily basis. Even the announcement that China and the Philippines had finally reached an agreement on the resupply of our troops on board the rotting BRP Sierra Madre at Ayungin Shoal was actually banal.

This had been done by the Duterte administration via bilateral talks but it is was scuttled by the Marcos regime only to agree now to what had been agreed upon before. A grade of “D” would be generous.

Infrastructure that are in the works today are generally the projects of the previous administration. But because he continued them anyway so a BBB is just fair.

Tourism which could immensely contribute to the Philippine economy is nothing but empty rhetoric.

With the government-led Sinophobia we should not expect the big spending Chinese globetrotters to come visit a country that thinks Chinese nationals are potential spies. That ₱35-billion proposed Taylor Swift auditorium is another attempt at corruption and will not wash. “E” for that too.

I was expecting something dramatic would be said about the agricultural sector but nothing concrete was mentioned in the 3rd SoNA of President Marcos.

Nothing in the State of the Nation Address, his longest, that I heard assured our farmers that their condition would be alleviated. The 35-percent tariff on rice imports was reduced to 15 percent making the government the biggest and most invulnerable competitor of the farmers.

The promise of ₱20/kilo rice was farcical as the price of rice reached over ₱60/kilo. While the tariff on imported rice is an all-time low the price of rice is still in the neighborhood of ₱50/kilo. The only people who celebrated are the importers and countries like Vietnam from where the rice on our table comes from. A grade of “E” is generous.

It is a sad commentary that Marcos Jr. is still oblivious to the agricultural template of his late father which once made the Philippines a rice exporter, not the world’s biggest importer which we are today.