100ARAW.com

Cause-oriented groups were not the only ones disappointed by President Aquino’s first state of the nation address. A political scientist from the University of the Philippines did not mince words and said the President’s speech lacked direction on how to achieve his aspiration for a “daang matuwid”.

Many Twitter users meanwhile lamented that President Aquino did not certify as urgent measures such reform-oriented bills such as those on Reproductive Health and on Freedom on Information, with not a few raising a howl that Aquino was completely silent on the issue of land reform.

It is President Aquino’s responsibility to expose all perfidious acts committed by his predecessor. He owes it to the nation to find out all of those transactions, and to mobilize government to run after Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her cohorts who cashed in on their positions and prerogatives.

It would have been a great combo had the President also certified as urgent the FOI bill which, side by side with the Whistleblowers’ Bill, would empower and encourage citizens to take a pro-active role in making government and government officials accountable and to help combat corruption that usually happens under the veil of secrecy.

One major highlight of the President’s speech was the idea of private-public partnerships which he claimed would help fund government and its operations and services. Nothing wrong really with the idea but this cannot be the determining factor of how the government would raise revenues and how these would be spent.

If there will be a serious battle against corruption, the money to be recovered or saved should be re-directed to vital social services.  The Aquino government would do better if it makes a vow to put people first in budgeting and spending and accounting for each centavo allotted and  spent. There are strategic areas of government and strategic services that, prudence and Constitution dictate, ought not be put under (financial) control of the private sector.

President Aquino also spoke on the “situation in Mindanao”. If only that phrase were half-true, that the Mindanao conflict is just “a situation”, there would have been no need for a peace process. Was it just a problematic choice of words, or a thinly-veiled admission that he is not at all knowledgeable of the long and deep roots of the conflict between Manila and the Bangsamoro people?

The President meanwhile talked tough regarding the communists, accusing them of offering no solutions, only criticism. He then foisted the old idea of a long truce or ceasefire — basically the same offer made by Arroyo. Aquino again was silent on the eleven prior agreements signed by Manila and the National Democratic Front, and his peace adviser may have not told him about the NDF’s proposed draft for a Comprehensive Agreement of Social and Economic Reforms. That draft is as practical and as detailed as the NDF could get insofar as proposing solutions to the socioeconomic ills that are at the root of the conflict.

We citizens offer no apology for making such observations. That is both a right and responsibility. Yes, because while the President has the right to make his own determination of the current state of the nation, how we arrived at and how to veer away from the present crisis, citizens are well within their rights under this Republic to make it known where Aquino made serious or unforgivable omissions.