A failure to communicate

Critics and opinion-makers often ask President Aquino (or the Palace communications triumvirate): “What’s the vision of the President? Where’s the roadmap?”

If you ask the man on the street, he is stumped. The rural and urban poor are indifferent to this issue. Their lives did not change at all during the past regimes.

“Walang wangwang” is not a mission/vision. It’s cheap sloganeering, an attempt to be pakwela. The middle class doesn’t take it seriously. The masang Pilipino pokes fun at it. They can’t eat wangwang. What matters to the masa are old gut issues: high prices of food, transportation, schooling expenses and lack of money for hospitalization and medicines.

“Walang corrupt” is a clean-up job, a janitorial service, turtle-paced and disappointing. No one gets jailed. The big-time crooks in the Armed Forces, police, customs, agriculture, public works, PCSO and Pagcor are shedding crocodile tears all the way to the bank.

“Walang mahirap” is a band-aid solution (CCT), a dole. A fish, not a fishing rod.

“Daang matuwid” is righteous. It is a complex transformational journey that demands all constituents to be religiously law-abiding in the spirit of solidarity. How many can hack it? Is there a pot of gold at the end of the road? Nobody knows.

But there’s a roadmap. And it is branded too. It is called Aquinomics (coined by Inquirer columnist Cielito Habito). The problem is only Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima is excited about it. “Aquinomics” is too technocratic. It does not capture the imagination of the people. There’s nothing earthshaking about the brand. We have heard this scheme before as Brand X and Brand Y. This time, Purisima says, the stamp of good governance goes with it. It has been retooled to eliminate graft and corruption, with emphasis on transparency and accountability.

Brand Aquinomics, Purisima says, has four pillars for attaining progress: a) Fiscal sustainability and macro-economic stability, b) Reduction of the infrastructure gap, c) Cost reduction in doing business to make the Philippines competitive, d) Investing in human capital.

Fantastic mission/vision goals have a way of capturing the imagination of the people. Quite often it is a seductive big idea that makes people act to transform society. The American Dream, for example, has mesmerized the poor and persecuted people from all over the world, causing a diaspora during the last three centuries. It means a good job with a good pay, high quality and affordable foods in the grocery cart, a two-car garage home in a manicured suburb, health insurance and some savings for travel, all within reach by swiping the almighty credit card.

The only life-changing big idea that captured the imagination of our people was a “to die for” idea generated by the Philippine Revolution against Spain. This paradigm shift had many champions who projected love of country heroics intellectually and physically: Gomburza, Rizal, Bonifacio and Aguinaldo. They loomed larger than life in the minds and hearts of the Filipino people. Their mission/vision was Filipino Freedom.

Some of the fantastic missions/visions in history were Eisenhower’s “Marshall Plan” to rehabilitate post-World War II Europe, Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” to end racial prejudice, Mikhail Gorbachev’s “Perestroika” to demolish the Berlin Wall, and Deng Xiaoping’s “Four Modernizations” to make Chinese entrepreneurs gloriously rich.

We have had a few post-war political visions that resonated among our people. President Ramon Magsaysay as “Man of the Masses” personified the fight for social justice and he walked the talk. His famous mantra: “Those who have less in life must have more in law.”

In the late 1960s, reelectionist President Ferdinand Marcos made an amazing breakthrough in rice sufficiency with his brand called “Masagana 99,” a new, high-yielding rice variety that was heavily advertised on radio. Masagana 99 became the symbol of our freedom from hunger and food security. Marcos perfectly understood the constituent psychology of the masa. He knew that political leadership in the Philippine context must assume the role of a provider-patriarch, not a technocratic manager.

While running for reelection, Marcos gave the people his famous RRC (Rice, Roads and Classrooms). He won by a landslide. Marcos captured the imagination of the people before he became a dictator.

The Aquino brand franchise incorporates Ninoy’s and Cory’s human virtues: sacrificial heroism and unflinching personal integrity, respectively. After the megacorruption and social dysfunctions of the Erap Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regimes our electorate became desperate in looking for a white knight. An overly optimistic interest group presumed that the Aquino brand’s halo was hereditary. The son, Sen. Noynoy Aquino, was it! Thanks to the unexpected resurrection of the yellow ribbon phenomenon (or Cory magic) during the wake and funeral of the late President Cory, Noynoy was catapulted to the presidency by a huge margin.

After one year under P-Noy, our country’s future remains uncertain without a central big idea. Instead, we hear P-Noy’s tactless and divisive innuendoes against the Chief Justice, the former ombudsman, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Catholic hierarchy and Cabinet men who give him headaches. He plays handyman to the nation’s many ills, a Mr. Fix-it doing odd jobs and repairing an old, decrepit house full of leaks, rotten poles, anay-eaten walls and clogged plumbing. Where’s the new, beautiful country where happy people live in peace and contentment? When?

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Minyong Ordoñez is a freelance journalist and a member of the Manila Overseas Press Club email: hgordoñ[email protected]