Running on faith

(Conclusion)

A friend of mine says he almost fell out of his seat when he heard P-Noy explain the DAP this way: It’s like two jeepneys running, the first one falling to a crawl and the other zooming past it. That is what government programs are, some have gotten stuck, others are on a hot streak. The DAP is simply taking gas from the inefficient jeepney, or funds from the inefficient program, and putting it into the more efficient one, the better to serve the public.

Did he run that by his legal advisers, my friend asked. Because it reminded him of this case.

In June 2001, the Municipal Core Shelter Assistance Program of the town of Leyte in Leyte province started a program that gave construction materials to victims of storms, the labor to be supplied by the victims themselves. In Sitio Luy-a, the victims stopped working with construction only 70 percent complete because they ran out of food for their families. The head of the program sought the help of the Supplemental Feeding Program, which was there to feed malnourished kids. The SFP head said she still had four sacks of rice and two boxes of sardines. With the approval of Mayor Arnold Ysidro, she gave them to the construction workers.

Shortly later, the Sangguniang Bayan filed a case of technical malversation against Ysidro. In November last year, the Supreme Court upheld the findings of the lower courts finding Ysidro guilty and fining him half the value of the goods, or P1,698. The Court dismissed his argument that this was for a good purpose, one that helped indigents too, and an emergency at that. It ruled that the food was earmarked for a definite beneficiary, and Ysidro could no more divert it to the workers than they could divert construction materials to the malnourished.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in the kinds of complications the DAP faces. Government of course may argue that the DAP is just diverting savings—though that is not clear in P-Noy’s example—two jeepneys running must suggest neither one has completed its trip—but this is another case where the excuse is itself inexcusable. Ping Lacson is right to be aghast: Why do we have too much savings?

You have the record of government offices of previous years to go by. Why do you keep overestimating their capacity to spend? All this does is create the suspicion of budget padding, the Department of Budget and Management in particular consenting to, or mounting, a regime of offices asking for more than they need, or can possibly use, to create massive savings, which can then be pooled and diverted to other uses.

If another president did this, we would be howling our heads off. P-Noy himself argues that this was what sparked our economic growth. The DAP is being “unjustly and oddly vilified in the media nearly two years after the same media lauded the government for its resourcefulness.” I myself recall only economic observers lauding the fact that unspent money was finally being spent, not that it was being spent the DAP way.

In any case, did the DAP really create the record economic growth? What seems the better explanation for it is not the DAP but P-Noy’s own “’pag walang corrupt, walang mahirap.” The broader sense of it is that it was precisely P-Noy’s moral ascendancy that sparked the economic growth. That is borne out by the volume of money that tumbled in from renewed investor confidence. Whence came the investor confidence? From the perception of the P-Noy administration being relatively clean, as shown by various surveys of investors who said it had become a pleasure doing business here. Indeed from the perception of the Filipino people themselves perceiving their government to be relatively clean, as shown by their approval ratings of it in surveys.

What would in fact be a sublime irony is the DAP bringing that record growth down by the controversy it has generated. It has already brought P-Noy’s approval ratings down, it could very well bring investor confidence down as well.

At the very most, what P-Noy calls resourcefulness, others would call “abuse of power.” Reynato Puno does. What the President calls resourcefulness, others would call “fiscal dictatorship.” Lacson does. At least in the case of Mayor Ysidro above, the “resourcefulness” served a patently useful purpose, even if it detracted from another one. We only have P-Noy’s word the DAP does.

Of course that word is worth a great deal. Not everyone who says, “I am not a thief too,” which Bong Revilla did after P-Noy, is believable. It’s a matter of credibility too. But that merely brings us back to the same conundrum: P-Noy can always say, “I am not a thief,” and be believed. But can his people do so too? Can Butch Abad? Can Mar Roxas? Can Frank Drilon? Can the party they head that is preparing to regain the throne in 2016?

I’m still hoping P-Noy will distance himself from the DAP, and soon will be none too soon. It can only bring his ratings further down. It’s not just a communications problem. The DAP is inherently problematic, and no brilliant communication strategy will push it beyond where it has already gone. Which is nowhere. It only makes it all the harder to prosecute Janet Lim-Napoles and the senators and congressmen by raising all sorts of questions about government’s own conduct, about government overstepping its bounds.

P-Noy got out of the rut of the campaign by restoring not just the difference but the contrast between himself and his rivals. The only way he can get out of the rut today is by restoring not just the difference but the contrast between him and his detractors. The DAP won’t help him do that. It requires too much faith. It requires too strenuous a leap of faith.

A government that insists on running on faith can only end up running on empty.