Where are we headed?

About President Benigno Aquino III’s second State of the Nation Address, we can be fairly sure of a few things: It will largely be in Filipino, both because it is the President’s language of choice (he excels in it, and knows it) and because it reflects something distinctive about his term (he is setting an example, and yet again knows it).

It will offer comparisons between the first year of the new administration and the nine years of the previous one, simply because any talk of numbers requires a benchmark. If the point of reference were the hundred-odd campaign promises made during election season, or even the targets set or implied in last year’s Sona, the comparison would be less than flattering. (The figure of 4,000 low-cost homes trumpeted recently is paltry compared to the Philippine Development Plan 2011 target of 190,000; the delay in the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, a key plank of the Aquino campaign platform, is both worrisome and inexplicable; and so on.) But the scandals of the Arroyo era, the specifics of many of which have only recently been brought to light—these would make for a sharper contrast.

Not least, it will talk about national direction. Why? Because administration officials are sensitive to criticism that they are only interested in exacting vengeance or, in the unfortunate words of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines in its latest letter, of feeding “the Aquino administration’s obsession with prosecuting former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.”

This sense of incipient drift, of an administration that is more focused on the past than the future, was the recurrent theme of a journalists’ seminar conducted by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility last month. In the perception of a good number of journalists, the focus on the so-called “tuwid na daan” has obscured the even more fundamental issue: Where will the straight path take us?

That is the real challenge that faces President Aquino when he addresses the joint session of Congress this afternoon. He will not lack for public support in pursuing any criminal case against top officials of the Arroyo administration. That is what he was voted into office for, and no apologist for the previous administration such as Raul Lambino, no loyal congressional ally such as Rep. Mitos Magsaysay, no conflicted publicity-rider such as Manoling Morato, can disguise the essential fact: The mandate to root out the corruption of the previous regime is real, the support for doing so remains robust.

The President will also not lack for political support in pursuing the second principal campaign promise of inclusive growth. As he has demonstrated in the politically fraught impeachment of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, or in the narrower but still remarkable legislative victory that led to the postponement of the elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, he wields decisive power in Congress, when he chooses to force the issue. This still-immense political capital will come in handy when the centerpiece economic program of the government, the so-called Private-Public Partnerships, will finally get off the ground; or when the administration’s commitment to the Conditional Cash Transfers is tested once again.

But the real challenge lies in giving the nation a sense of direction. It is important that a critical mass of citizens take part in the collective effort to walk the straight and narrow. This is not the responsibility of the government, any government, alone; we all have our roles to play. But every now and then every engaged citizen asks: Where will this road bring us?

Perhaps President Aquino will not need to invent anything new. His main task is to remember those ideals that gave shape to our nation, to remind us of what they are—and to define what these ideals mean to us, in our time. His emphasis on keeping to the straight path, for instance, will allow him to speak of Rizal’s notion of a national community of virtuous persons; or to rediscover Bonifacio’s nation of equals; or to redefine Mabini’s republic in 21st-century terms. He may even wish to elaborate on his own father’s dying vision: a country with a “more equitable distribution of wealth, more democracy and more freedom.”