The long and short of 3rd Sona

President Aquino’s State of the Nation Address may have been the longest in history but its claim to historic changes instituted under his administration fell short. The changes are merely superficial not thoroughgoing. No social or economic reform has been implemented in the last two years and none is forthcoming. P-Noy even lacks the commitment to push for the Freedom of Information bill which should be a plank of his good governance advocacy.

P-Noy asserts that good governance is leading to palpable improvements, but only social justice will bring concrete changes to ordinary peoples’ lives. Glaringly absent from the litany of numbers and data mentioned in his Sona were the statistics on poverty and hunger. This is not surprising because, despite a decade of so-called GNP growth, the number of the poor and hungry has remained intractable.

GNP growth only means the increasing numbers of “Gutom Na Pilipino” among workers and the poor. From 2003-2009 the economy grew by an average of 4.8 percent but the number of poor Filipinos increased from 19.8 million to 23.1 million. Poverty will not be dented no matter how many cases are filed against former President Gloria Arroyo and how many minions of hers are jailed together with former Comelec chief Benjamin Abalos.

Regular jobs and living wages are needed not the Conditional Cash Transfer program, which is a band-aid solution at best. Among the Asean nations, the Philippines has the most persistent incidence of poverty (defined as living on less than $1.25 a day). We have the highest percentage of slum residents in terms of urban population among six Asian countries.

While the employment rate went up, as P-Noy insisted, the number of underemployed—those who have work but are still seeking work—has increased from 7.6 million in April 2011 to 7.8 million in April 2012. Even as P-Noy remains a hardliner in the struggle to bring Arroyo to justice, he is nonetheless soft on the fight for social justice against entrenched vested interests. He was challenged and found wanting on the issue of outsourcing at Philippine Airlines, which faces the biggest labor dispute in the country. P-Noy may have won the confidence of potential investors in the privatization projects under the Public-Private Partnerhip program, but he has earned the ire of workers for his approval of contractualization at the flag carrier.

Truly the real state of the nation is reflected in the lack of jobs, food, housing and justice for the Filipino masses. To tackle the challenges of destitution and joblessness, the anticorruption campaign of President Aquino will not suffice. The answer lies in taking a new path of development away from the Aquinomics of privatization, contractualization and globalization.

—RENATO MAGTUBO,

chair, Partido ng Manggagawa,

manggagawa@gmail.com