The President’s ‘style’

PRESIDENT AQUINO’S second State of the Nation Address (Sona) fell short of some of the public’s expectations. And yet it is also true to say that with it he exceeded other, equally substantial expectations. In time, his second Sona may come to be regarded as a defining speech of his presidency—not in terms of being the most important, but in terms of being most characteristic. In the second Sona, we get the sense that this hero’s son, this icon’s heir, has come into his own.

Hence, the characteristic pugnacity at the heart of the most important passage in the entire speech. It is best to use the Filipino original, because the official English translation is less than faithful. “May mga nagsasabing pinepersonal ko raw ang paghahabol sa mga tiwali. Totoo po: Personal talaga sa akin ang paggawa ng tama, at ang pagpapanagot sa mga gumagawa ng mali—sino man sila.” (A possible translation: There are those who say I take the pursuit of the corrupt personally. It’s true: Doing what is right is personal to me, and so is holding to account those who do wrong—whoever they are.)

This inversion of one of the strongest criticisms against him (that he is consumed by a personal vendetta against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) reminds us of the same approach his own mother used when she ran against Ferdinand Marcos in the 1986 snap election; Cory Aquino took what Marcos said, that she was a know-nothing, and inverted it to say it was true, she knew nothing—about graft and corruption, about abuse of power. But the “it’s personal” passage also reflects the true character of the incumbent: the fight-when-cornered stubbornness that made him a source of strength for the Aquino family during the various coup attempts, the less-than-praiseworthy readiness to harden positions when confronted by criticism.

But the passage has the added virtue of being true, because in fact corruption—especially the kind that flourished under the previous administration, protected by the so-called presumption of regularity—victimizes all of us. We can contrast this passage with another one about the President’s style of governance (“ating estilo ng pamamahala”), the meaning of which he sought to invert too. But criticisms about the President’s perceived laidback approach to work cannot be sidestepped simply by pointing to results, as he did, because naturally people will say, “Think of what more could be done!”

The second Sona was also marked by a characteristic disinterest in detail. Except for a few names which he mentioned, such as those of the public works secretary and the President’s college teacher in Filipino, Mr. Aquino showed no inclination to flatter his audience with an honor roll of favored politicians or pet projects. This is not entirely a good thing, because fostering a sense of inclusiveness is one of the powers of the presidential bully pulpit. But here we get the sense that, despite knowing that he would be criticized for not highlighting touchstone issues, such as the proposed Freedom of Information Act or the reproductive health bill, he went ahead anyway. For better or worse, this is the kind of president we elected.

There is also the characteristic interest in what we can call symbolic graft—the telling anecdote about corruption and abuse of power. He listed a few last year; this year he focused on the P1 billion the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. under Efraim Genuino spent on coffee. We think this was an inspired choice, not merely because it allowed him to question the previous dispensation’s guilty conscience in pointed, idiomatic Filipino (can they still sleep at night?), but because the succession of plunder and other charges being filed against Arroyo and company has tended to obscure the essential: Theirs was abuse of power on an unprecedented scale.

President Aquino ended his second Sona with an appeal to the better angels of our nature. “Do we still remember the last time we praised a fellow Filipino?” He proposed a specific virtue we should all cultivate: gratitude.

We see the last paragraphs of the second Sona as an attempt to lift public discourse out of the political divisiveness that marked the last years of the Estrada presidency and the entirety of the Arroyo term. It is a necessary task, especially because we can expect the cases against Arroyo and company to progress under an independent ombudsman. But even in this too, the President was merely being true to character.