Names unspoken
A SoNA delivered with two years remaining of a six-year term should be judged not only on how well emergencies were handled, but on how many fewer emergencies the country will need to manage by 2028.
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A SoNA delivered with two years remaining of a six-year term should be judged not only on how well emergencies were handled, but on how many fewer emergencies the country will need to manage by 2028.
Listen closely and President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s fifth State of the Nation Address (SoNA) on Monday was less a report on governance than a speech on crisis management.
A State of National Energy Emergency. A new concept called a State of Imminent Disaster. Suspended excise taxes on LPG and kerosene. Staggered fuel price increases.
Payment moratoriums from banks, refunds ordered for overcharged electricity consumers, diesel subsidies for jeepneys, fare discounts, waived tolls, nearly P58 billion rushed to local governments and nearly P60 billion more earmarked as “ayuda” before year’s end.
Almost every relief measure in this monologue was triggered by something gone wrong — the Middle East war, an energy shock, earthquakes and floods. The government’s response to each was swift and, by the numbers, substantial.
Twelve thousand OFWs repatriated. More than 140,000 assisted. Alternative oil secured from six countries. Almost two months’ worth of inventory maintained through a Strait of Hormuz disruption most Filipinos had never had reason to think about.
That is something. A government that cannot respond to a crisis fails at the most basic task it has. But there is a difference between a country that manages emergencies well and one that has simply learned to live through them, one after another.
The speech had its moment of political theater, too. Marcos disclosed, without naming him, that his own cousin — in this case, former House Speaker Martin Romualdez — would face charges before the Ombudsman over the flood control scandal.
He then reminded the nation that he is President of the entire country, not of family or friends — one of the afternoon’s strongest lines.
But like every anti-corruption campaign, this will be judged not by the filing of cases but by convictions, recovered money and whether future flood control projects finally withstand the floods they were built to prevent.
So far, he said, P25 billion in “stolen” flood control project funds had been recovered, frozen, or preserved.
Now, consider how much of this SoNA’s language was the language of exception: emergency, imminent, temporary, suspended, staggered and waived. These are words that describe a pause, not a fix.
They announce that normal rules have been set aside because normal conditions had failed to hold, and they invite a question the speech never quite answered: What happens when the emergency ends and the underlying problem is still there?
Electricity is the clearest case. Refunds for overcharging and installment plans for unpaid bills are relief, not reform. They ease a symptom that has been chronic for years. Filipinos have paid some of Asia’s highest power rates through administrations of every stripe.
Two hundred energy projects, new gas discoveries, renewed interest in nuclear power and a proposed Sariling Kuryente Act are the real answer, if they materialize. That’s a big “if,” considering this President’s many promises that remain promises.
Yet what drew the loudest applause was not a power plant or a gas field, but the promise to remove “systems loss” charges from electricity bills by amending the EPIRA Law — politically irresistible because it spoke directly to household budgets.
Applause, though, is easier to earn than structural reform. A citizen half-listening could be forgiven for placing the diesel subsidy, the systems-loss pledge and the gas discovery in the same category of accomplishment.
They are not. The first two buy time. The last, if it succeeds, buys a different future.
The same pattern holds in disaster response. A four-tier relief network capable of reaching families within 24 hours is a genuine institutional advance.
None of this is unique to the Philippines, and none of it is dishonest. A government that did nothing while OFWs were stranded or fuel prices spiked would deserve far harsher criticism than one that acted.
A SoNA delivered with two years remaining of a six-year term should be judged not only on how well emergencies were handled, but on how many fewer emergencies the country will need to manage by 2028.
Thus, the measure of this administration will not be how many states of emergency it declared and resolved. It will be whether, by the time it hands over Malacañang, ordinary Filipinos are living through fewer of them.
Then there is the one emergency — his emergency — Marcos did not speak about but that undoubtedly hangs over the present occupants or the Palace by the Pasig River: Sara and 2028.
