Bayan statement on the occasion of Aquino’s SONA
July 25 ,2011
In so many words, the Aquino administration and its allies have been telling the public that it should not be expecting too much from the new government in its first year. After all, they said, what Aquino is trying to undo is nine years of the corrupt and anti-people legacy of the hated Gloria Arroyo administration. Change is not an overnight process, according to them. To be sure, no one is asking the President to change the country in one year. The political and economic crises we face are too deep to be resolved during the entire term of Aquino, much less in his first year. However, based on his track record as Chief Executive thus far, Aquino has demonstrated a grave incapacity not only to initiate long-term progressive reforms but even to implement urgent policy measures that will protect and uphold the interest of the people.
A year into his presidency, Aquino saw his public satisfaction ratings dip continuously as an increasing number of Filipinos get disenchanted with the government. Such disenchantment is being fed by the soaring prices of fuel, food, and utilities that continue to oppress the people as a result of Aquino’s perpetuation of the same neoliberal economic policies of privatization and deregulation. He allowed rates to skyrocket in toll roads and LRT/MRT to promote his public-private partnership (PPP). He refused to scrap or even suspend the onerous 12 percent value-added tax (VAT) to mitigate the price hikes because it will turn off creditors. Aquino has prioritized creditors over the people with more than half of public spending going to debt servicing in the past year leaving practically nothing for social services like education, health, and housing.
Public disenchantment is also being fed by the incompetence of Aquino in dealing with people’s issues that require urgent action. As the representative of landlord and big business interest, Aquino, unsurprisingly, not taken the side of the farmers and farm workers in the Hacienda Luisita dispute or with the workers in the struggle for a legislated substantial wage hike. Instead of laying the groundwork for long-term and sustainable programs that can generate jobs and reduce hunger and poverty, all Aquino has offered are Pantawid measures – Pantawid Pamilya (conditional cash transfer), Pantawid Pasada (fuel subsidy), and Pantawid trabaho (Community-Based Employment Program) – that given the magnitude of the crisis are grossly inadequate even as relief measures.
Aquino is incompetent even on his promise to make Mrs. Gloria Arroyo accountable for her many crimes, reducing the matter to never-ending barbs and exposés, while no cases have been filed. His promise to review the lopsided Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the US has merely ended in further legitimizing and justifying American presence and intervention using the Spratlys dispute as pretext, even to the point of irresponsibly stoking the tension with China. Meanwhile, under Aquino’s US-supported counterinsurgency program Oplan Bayanihan, human rights violations including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance, and arrests have continued. The peace talks are being derailed by government’s refusal to honor previous agreements with the NDFP.
Aquino cannot blame Arroyo for his own blunders and failures. He cannot plead for more time to implement his supposed reform agenda. One year is more than enough to see which direction the so-called Daang Matuwid is heading to. Alas, it’s not in the direction of respecting and fulfilling the people’s social, economic, and political rights, but in the same crooked path of flawed neoliberal economic policies, patronage politics, landlord and big business domination, and subservience to foreign dictates especially of US imperialism. Thus, the most important lesson from the first year of the Aquino presidency is that the best prospect for genuine change that will serve the people lies not in Aquino’s hands but in the hands of the poor, oppressed, and exploited. Hope for genuine change is indeed dim under Aquino but it is ever brightest in the unwavering struggle of the people for national democracy and freedom. (End)
