Aquino’s silence on gov’t duty to SSS

IN A message to Congress, President Aquino explained why he vetoed the bill that would have increased the monthly pension of Social Security System retirees. As if arithmetic was enough to justify his action, he warned that increasing the monthly pension of the retirees would cause the SSS to incur a loss that would deplete its funds in 13 years.

Mr. Aquino conveniently leaves out of his equation the crucial factor mentioned by Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares that the SSS will never go bankrupt because the government is under obligation to replenish the deficit from the pension hike. The law imposes on the government general responsibility for the solvency of the SSS, so that there is no reason to fear that the SSS will fold up. It has the sovereign backing of the state.

Mr. Aquino’s silence on this point is strange. As chief executive, he has control of the SSS board and, as head of the majority party in Congress, can spearhead measures to beef up the pension fund. But he makes no such move. After five years of profligate spending and mismanagement of public funds under his administration, he chooses to look the other way.

Consider how much money of the people was actually diverted and wasted. In 2011 and 2013 alone, over P200 billion was lost to graft. Within the period 2010 to 2013, revenue lost to smuggling reached an annual P140 billion. Billions of pesos more were misused under the conditional cash transfer and other social programs of his administration. Yet when it comes to giving our poor retirees a modest pension, he acts like a Scrooge?
Mr. Aquino should repair the damage caused by his insensitive veto of the pension bill—with political will and genuine sincerity in the pursuit of his daang mutuwid.

—MARIO GUARIÑA III, former associate justice of the Court of Appeals