The first year

How P-Noy (President Benigno Aquino III) fared during his first year in office is the easiest thing to see: Far more than the past but far less than the future. Or far better than his predecessor but far short of the expectations.

For that reason, it is also the hardest thing to see. That’s so because those two elements are often fused together.

You see that in the criticisms against P-Noy hurled by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her cohorts, those cohorts including some of the bishops who profited immensely from her rule. The implication being that P-Noy has done less than his predecessor, Arroyo, or indeed, as Arroyo herself expressly suggested, that he is frittering away her legacy.

That is idiotic. You compare what P-Noy has done in one year to what Arroyo did in 10, and you are not looking at a comparison, you are looking at a contrast. Simply put, it is worlds better to wonder if anybody’s home than to be certain there’s the Akyat Bahay Gang there.

You saw that contrast a couple of weeks ago at the height of “Falcon.” You compare what we, particularly Metro Manila, went through during “Ondoy” and what we did the other week, and you realize how utterly unfair, and vicious, that suggestion is that we have not moved at all from Arroyo’s time, or even regressed from it. At the very least you knew that if government hadn’t come to the aid of the ravaged as fast and as forcefully as the ravaged might have wanted it, it wasn’t for lack of trying. You knew that if government had less equipment and resources than was needed, it wasn’t because it had stolen them. You knew, or could believe, that you had a president who had your wellbeing at heart and not one you were certain would try to rip you off in your direst straits.

If that is not a sea change, I don’t know what is.

The Cebu Business Club says P-Noy shouldn’t keep blaming the Arroyo administration but should instead start moving the country forward. At the very least that proposition shares the same sorry spirit as the one Sixto Brilliantes put forward last week, which was that he wasn’t going to investigate “Hello, Garci” because that was the past, he was concerned only about the future. You don’t see the past, you won’t have a future.

Where the issue is economic performance, in particular, you do have to blame the past. The economy is not something you can just crank up as soon as you get it. The thing is lacking in oil, in parts, in engine, it won’t run no matter how much you crank it up. The economy isn’t just about statistics—and Mark Twain is completely right to say, “There are three kinds of lies: big lies, little lies and statistics”—it is about people. And the one thing the people were during Arroyo’s time was hungry. In every possible sense of the word. The only economic performance that really matters is the one that stops making the people hungry. All the rest is just, well, big lies, little lies and statistics.

In any case, the P-Noy government hasn’t just blamed the past, it has done something about it. I am not at all surprised that the SWS reports that the number of hungry went down from 20 percent of Filipino families to 15 from the first to the second quarter of this year. There is a fundamental truth to “Pag walang corrupt, walang mahirap.” You don’t steal the relief goods, they will get to the ravaged. You don’t steal the people’s money, it will feed the hungry.

But I agree with the criticisms that have to do with P-Noy falling short of expectations. Whether he personally raised those expectations or not, his campaign did, predicated as it was on Edsa. That was its image, that was its message, that was its source of success. Whether he is personally inclined to go into heroic mode or not, it is expected of him. That’s the part where the brickbats are earned. His rule is expected to be larger than life, it has shown itself to be smaller than it.

Not least in its failure to prosecute the Arroyos for corruption.

While P-Noy is well within his rights to blame his predecessor for the many plagues that have visited this country, particularly the depth of poverty and hunger in it, he may not confine himself to it. You can’t just keep saying, “Sorry if the car won’t run, but its last user ran off with the engine.” If so, then run after the person who ran off with the engine and get it back. If so, then throw that person in jail.

Cory at least had the Presidential Commission on Good Government, and while that did not entirely succeed in recovering the ill-gotten wealth, the recoverers forgetting that they were meant to recover it for the country and not for themselves, it did put the fear of God and woman for a while in the big-time crooks. Certainly, it gave the people a glimpse of the avenging angel come down with flaming sword.

Running after the Arroyos has that immensely practical value: to get back what they stole. The reason they’re still able to take potshots at government today is that they still have that loot, frying the people in their own fat.

But more than that, it strikes at the very heart of P-Noy’s vow. “Pag walang corrupt, walang mahirap” can’t just mean, “Let’s just forget about the crooks of the past and start not stealing today.” It should mean jailing the crooks of the past to make sure there won’t be crooks in the future. “’Pag walang corrupt, walang mahirap” can’t just mean “’pag walang mandarambong, walang nagugutom,” it should mean “’’pag walang mananalanta, walang alipusta.” The corruption of the Arroyo regime wasn’t just thievery, it was tyranny, of the scale and intensity of the Marcos regime. You don’t prosecute them for it, tyranny will return again and again as surely as night follows day, the way it did from Marcos to Arroyo.

One year in power, P-Noy has pushed the cart out of the mud but has barely begun the journey.