WHAT AQUINO HAS NOT DONE FOR ALL FILIPINOS

Submitted byNESTOR MATAon May 26, 2015

PRESIDENT Noynoy Aquino claims that he started reforms in governance and achieved economic gains under his watch ever since he ascended the presidency five years ago.

This prompted political critics, pundits, analysts and commentators in print and broadcast media to voice their doubts about his achievements. Some Aquino watchers even wondered if hes living in cloud-cuckoo-land or a realm fantasy. And one of them has boldly asked a litany of questions, which completely belied Aquinos claims.

How much of his main claim to success in the string of 6-7 percent economic growth since 2012 and the credit rating upgrades for foreign borrowings of the national government were attributable to Aquino?

What policies and initiatives did he undertake which significantly spurred economic expansion? Was it the tough fiscal reforms cited by international debt agencies in upgrading Philippine sovereign debt? Did Aquinos public-private partnership program hugely augment infrastructure, the perennial area of concern among investors? Or have public works and growth suffered due to PPP delays and chronic under-spending since 2011?

Did his anti-poverty program uplift the poor? After he expanded to P40 billion a year since 2012 the conditional cash transfer monthly stipends for poor families, inherited from the Arroyo government, how much has CCT and economic growth reduce poverty and hunger incidence? Going by the governments own data, poverty incidence has remained at about 20 percent since 2009, while hunger incidence from 2011 to 2014 averaged 19.4 percent, higher than the 19.1 percent average during the global recession and the Ondoy and Pepeng megafloods in 2009.

Has Aquino made big gains against graft and corruption in government? His administration supporters often cite the no-bail detention of former President Gloria Arroyo and three opposition senators on corruption charges as singular accomplishments in the fight against graft, but why he not made his clique of cronies, classmates, allies and shooting buddies made them accountable for graft and corruption in the way he did to his political rivals?

What has Aquino done about major irregularities like the disappearance of more than 2,000 untaxed and uninspected cargo containers in 2011; the billion-peso police firearms bidding Aquino himself ordered investigated in 2013; the Metro Rail Transit maintenance contractawarded to a crony consortium; the reported $30-million bribe demand made to Czech rail firm Inekon for an MRT contract; the tens of billions of pesos in misspending found by state auditors in the Agriculture, Agrarian Reform, and Tourism Departments, and the third batch of pork barrel cases which Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said are no longer her priority?

Can Aquino dispute the findings, contrary to his vaunted Daan na Matuwid anti-corruption mantra, of Transparency International that in its 2013 Global Corruption Barometer survey, nearly one-fifth respondents in the country said corruption increased a lot since the TI poll in 2010, that another 12 percent said sleaze got a little worse, with nearly a third finding no improvement under Aquino?

Didnt Aquino undermine democracy and the rule of law, such as the use of pork barrel funds in inducing lawmakers to pass his pet bills and impeach his perceived enemies; his blatant disregard and open criticism of Supreme Court rulings, including unanimous decisions declaring pork barrel allocations unconstitutional; his meddling in court cases involving leading politicians, and other transgressions of the laws?

Has Aquino made Filipinos safer and secure? The latest Philippine National Police data show that crime incidence doubled between 2010 and 2014. What sanctions were imposed on PNP officials suspended and investigated for submitting false crime data, which made it appear that crime was declining under Aquino?

How did Aquino implement the 2010 National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act, including the mandated creation of a billion-peso DRRM agency similar to the U.S.? On the Federal Emergency Management Administration, what projects have been funded by the billion-peso People Protection Fund enacted nearly three years ago to safeguard calamity-prone communities?

How is Aquino handling major national security and foreign policy issues, such as the territorial and maritime disputes with China in the West Philippine Sea and the United States military deployment in the country?

Finally, why is Aquino dictating the approval pronto by Congress of his proposal for a Bangsamoro Basic Law, despite its patently constitutional flaws as cited by eminent former chief justices and associate justices of the Supreme Court, constitutionalists and other legal experts, and why is he turning deaf ears to the opposition by Muslim lawyers led by Dr. Firdausi Abbas, Sultan of Lanao and president of the Muslim Bar Association of the Philippines, other Muslim leaders in Mindanao, the Blaans in Maguindanao and South Cotabato, and the Tausogs of Sulu, to the passage of the BBL bill?

All of these questions might well be summed in one single stinging question: What has President Noynoy Aquino NOT DONE for all the Filipino people?

***

President Aquino may have easily persuaded members of the ad hoc committee of the House of Representatives led by Cagayan de Oro Rufus Rodriguez to railroad the passage of his version of the proposed BBL, but he cant do that to Senator Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., chairman of the Senate committee tackling the BBL and to Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, chairman of the Senate committee on constitutional amendments.

Unless we sufficiently address the constitutionality, the concerns of all stakeholders, as well as practical issues of administration and other problematic provisions of BBL, Senator Marcos said, it will surely be challenged before the Supreme Court. Senator Santiago herself found insidious doubts in the present state of the BBL drafted by the House ad hoc committee, which fails the two-fold test set by the Constitution: national sovereignty and territorial integrity... The proposed Bangsamoro territory, she added, is highly similar to the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) or the associative state, which the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional in 2008 for posing the threat of territorial dismemberment of the Philippines. In Mindanao itself, the opposition to Aquinos constitutionally-flawed BBL is gaining a ground, according Dr. Firdausi Abbas, Sultan of Lanao and president of the Muslim Bar Association of the Philippines, along with other Muslim leaders in Mindanao, when they found out that its provisions are contrary to Islam, to the Moro heritage and culture, and that it is Haram (prohibited) for a Muslim to support it.

Indeed, a majority of inhabitants in Mindanao, including Lanao, Davao, Cotabato and Zamboanga, the Blaans in Magindanao and South Cotabato, and Tausogs in Sulu, have rejected the BBL. As voiced by Ahmad Tan Sali of the Anal Sug (Son of Sulu), the Tausogs are opposed to the proposed law because they know that the MILF and the Bangsamoro government will be used to erase the Sabah claim and legitimize illegal arrangements between the Aquino government and Malaysia. Sabah belongs to Sulu, period!

So, why, oh, why has President Aquino turned deaf ears to the voice of the Filipino people, Christians and Muslims alike, that they are against the balkanization or dismemberment of the Philippines?

***

Quote of the Day: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely...There is no worst heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. Lord Acton