What a difference a year makes

The last time P-Noy delivered the State of the Nation Address, he was triumphant. Last year’s Sona was the longest by far, lasting more than an hour. But though long, it didn’t seem interminable. Delivered in his now-trademark Filipino, where he is far more eloquent than Erap, P-Noy dwelled at length on his administration’s accomplishments, peppering his remarks with stinging rebukes of departments that had performed badly—he singled out Customs for the dubious honor—as well as those he reckoned to be corrupt. Augusto Syjuco chief of them, one of the current filers of an impeachment case against him.

The President stood on a pedestal, and the only question was: When comes such another? Who was going to continue his work? Who was going to propagate his legacy?

Then, before you knew it, things began to unravel.

A month later, the antipork people took to the Luneta in a largely spontaneous “Million People March” to protest pork, in the form of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF,) which the Inquirer in particular showed to have been squandered in scandalous quantities through Janet Napoles’ NGOs. Government’s initial response was to defend the  PDAF, arguing, one, that the legislators were in the best position to know the needs at grassroots level, and, two, that it was a fastest method of getting things to the people.

That defense didn’t sit well with the public, who became more painfully aware of the extent of corruption in PDAF over the following weeks. This was complicated by Jinggoy Estrada’s accusation that the executive had its own version of pork, a portion of which had been used to buy off the senators into voting against Renato Corona. Budget Secretary Butch Abad admitted that part of what he called the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP)—this was the first time the public heard about it—had been used to augment the senators’ budget but denied it was a bribe, it was given nine months after the Corona trial.

The revelation of the DAP, alongside its defense of the PDAF, sent government’s approval ratings spiraling down. By November, it had gotten its lowest numbers since it came into power.

Christmas brought some respite from the buffeting government was taking, and with continuing record growth despite Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” capped by the Global Summit which drove home the point, and with government’s determination to prosecute Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, and Bong Revilla, for corruption, government rallied, gaining much lost ground and coming back on track.

Then the Supreme Court ruled the DAP unconstitutional.

P-Noy’s reaction to it has not been to bow down to it, backtrack from it, look for other options, it has been to stand his ground and defend the DAP to astonishing lengths. Of course you never know what surprise he might spring today at the Sona, but his utterances and moves over the last couple of weeks do not give much hope he might reconsider his position. The Cabinet was in the Senate full force last Thursday to wage an information, if not charm, offensive on it. We’ll know soon enough how their explanations will fare before the public when P-Noy faces the nation today.

There are several troubling things about that offensive however. At the very least, it comes a little too late. The time to have advanced those arguments was when the Supreme Court was deliberating on the constitutionality of the DAP, not after. To suggest that the best legal minds of the country to a man or woman missed the legal underpinnings of the DAP is breathtakingly presumptuous. That can’t be a persuasive argument.

While at that, the charge that the Supreme Court itself took the DAP—like shortcuts in its use of monies makes for an even less persuasive argument. I remember again a movie where an American who has landed in a French jail tries to convince his jailer to let him go. “All I did,” he said, “was to go to bed with a married woman. Surely you can understand that, you’re French.” “Ah,” his jailer said, “to go to bed with a married woman, that is French. To get caught, that is American.”

Beyond the facetious, you grant the Supreme Court did it too, two wrongs do not make a right. Why want to follow, or go in the direction of, the wrong things? That argument makes for lawlessness all around.

But far more than that, look at how skewed Abad’s argument was. The Court’s ruling, he lamented, did not grant government a presumption of good faith and puts a chilling effect on government’s push for reform. What, you turn unobligated funds into savings, a clear violation of budget rules, and the Court is obliged to presume that you did it with the best of intentions and not complain about it? What, you engage in cross-border transfer of funds, another clear violation of budget rules, and the Court is obliged not to protest it because it would put a brake on reform? What, you spend for things that are not in the General Appropriations Act, still another violation of the budget rules, and you put the burden of proof on the Court to prove that you did not succeed in doing right by doing wrong?

That is an Alice-in-Wonderland proposition. It sets a dangerous precedent for the next administration. What’s to prevent Jojo Binay, who will very likely be the next president, barring an alternative, preferably Grace Poe, challenging him in 2016, from bending the Constitution every which way on the ground that he means well?

From the start, I had opposed the DAP and am astonished by the trouble government has gone to defend it, a case, as I see it, of the tail wagging the dog. It offers no institutional

differentiation of the DAP from the PDAF, only the “exceptionalist” one of “Trust us, we don’t abuse shortcuts, we use it to do good.” Like I said, we’ll know soon enough how that sells with the public. But what a pity, resting, and risking, government’s past and future on it.

What a difference a year makes.