STAR EDITORIAL: KASANGGA (PUBLIC SUPPORT) / 100 DAYS: A DROP OF 12 POINTS
MANILA, OCTOBER 10, 2010 (STAR) Human rights advocates gave him low marks, and infighting within his inner circle is threatening to derail his reform agenda. Overall, however, President Aquino is marking his 100th day in office today still with a lot of public support. Aware that a hundred days is too short to pass judgment on a new administration, the public is still ready to give him room for mistakes. The President must not waste that narrow window of public forbearance.
On the eve of his 100th day, the President, in a report to his "boss" the people, reiterated his campaign vow to work for transparency and honesty in government. He said the country is ready for takeoff, noting renewed investor confidence and the international goodwill enjoyed by his administration. With the end of his honeymoon period with media critics, he also urged the people to rally behind him, saying he and the people are kasangga or sparring partners.
That is no idle call, if the people expect this government to succeed. The system President Aquino is trying to change has many beneficiaries, a number of whom are still in a position to block his reform agenda. Public support is indispensable for defeating these forces.
What the public now wants is direction, if not vision, for the rest of his presidency. The past 100 days have also shown that while the President himself continues to enjoy public support, the same cannot be said of some of the individuals he has chosen to serve his government. The mishandling of the Aug. 23 hostage incident is just the worst manifestation of the weak spots in his administration.
For all the weaknesses that have been exposed in the past 100 days, the President remains true to his promise of promoting transparency and good government. He is the first Philippine president to open himself to anonymous and often vitriolic heckling through social media. He continues to receive text messages – and text back – friends and journalists who have known him for many years. He is leading by example, a constant reminder to civil servants that public office is not an entitlement but a public trust. For this, most Filipinos are still ready to be his partners.
100 days SKETCHES By Ana Marie Pamintuan (The Philippine Star) Updated October 08, 2010 12:00 AM Comments (10)
A drop of 12 points is large, if you're starting, say, from 12 percent and plunging to zero.
Falling from 83 points in June to 71 – the percentage of Filipinos satisfied with the performance of P-Noy as of Sept. 24 to 27 – can be worrisome in an election campaign, but the figure is still comfortably high for a sitting president.
The results of the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey should stop President Noynoy Aquino from grousing that in assessing his first 100 days, people will either see a glass half-full or half-empty, with the perceptions likely taking shape way back during the campaign. A satisfaction rating of 71 percent is not a case of seeing a glass half-full. That's still a lot of public optimism over the Philippines' new management. Consumer confidence is high, investors are guardedly bullish, foreign aid donors are ready to help, and senators have given P-Noy's performance a fair rating.
That rosy outlook should only be expected. After all, how much, realistically, given the circumstances in this dysfunctional country, can be achieved in 100 days?
Within that brief period, a chief executive can only lay the groundwork and set the pace for promised reforms.
P-Noy has set a personal example in frugality and eschewing the perks of power, shaming the elite into following his lead.
The Commission on Audit and the President's congressional allies are unearthing anomalies in many government offices, reinforcing the belief of those who voted for him that they were right in picking the antithesis of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as her successor.
And while P-Noy's other initiatives, such as the Truth Commission, are suffering from what has been described as a failure to launch, there are people who see the Supreme Court as the culprit instead of legal bungling by Malacañang.
Benigno Cojuangco Aquino III entered the presidential campaign with barely the foggiest notion of what he intended to do in case he won, and unable to defend his lackluster record as a lawmaker for over a decade.
But over the past months, the guy has shown that he has a steep learning curve. The latest manifestation of this was his meeting with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The transcript of the Q&A can be accessed on the Internet.
P-Noy reaches his 100th day in office today with most of the personal qualities that propelled him to power still intact.
* * *
Still, a 12 percent drop in satisfaction rating in three months cannot be taken for granted. The first 100 days should serve as a guide for the President on the weaknesses that must be corrected in his administration, and the direction that his government must take in the coming months.
He marks his 100th day in office today with the shadow of indecisiveness hanging over his leadership.
That shadow started with his seeming inability to make his official family speak with one voice. To this day the cacophony remains, largely due to the continuing feud between two influential factions in his government.
The shadow is now aggravated by perceptions that he is waffling big-time in his review of the recommendations of the committee formed to investigate the Aug. 23 hostage fiasco.
The buzz from Malacañang about the results of the review is that the President keeps changing his mind not just from day to day but, it seems, every several hours.
After the hostage crisis, I wondered if a public official could face criminal indictment for making the wrong judgment calls without criminal intent, or for leaving a crisis to have dinner, or for plain stupidity. After reading the complete report of the incident investigation and review committee, including the recommendations, a member of the President's inner circle reportedly concluded that there was no case. But how do you sell this to the people – both in this country and Hong Kong (and the Chinese mainland) – for whom sanctions are an integral part of catharsis and closure?
If P-Noy believes there is no strong case against anybody, he should be able to defend his position and explain his decision to the public. It will be a test of his leadership.
He's been reviewing the report longer than it took to conduct the marathon probe. The first thing he must do is cut the dilly-dallying and announce the results of his review, if he doesn't want another 12 percent drop in his approval rating before Christmas.
Among the 12 percent who now register dissatisfaction must be people who have been "dis-appointed" in the past three months – supporters who failed to get hoped-for appointments for themselves or others.
Also included must be critics of his stance on birth control. But then P-Noy has always been for the promotion of women's reproductive health, and if he forges ahead with his program, without being pugnacious about it, his approval rating could rise.
The carping over the hotdog lunch in New York (after the carping over expensive dinners of the previous dispensation) should be seen as an early symptom of public impatience with his administration. Pinoys can be long-suffering but criticism comes quickly, and incessant destructive criticism can be a hindrance to good governance.
Yesterday P-Noy called his "boss" the people his "kasangga" or partner in his endeavors, warning that his 100-day honeymoon with critics (which he says he barely felt) is over.
But if the survey results are accurate, Filipinos are still willing to cut him a lot of slack. Unless a president betrays public trust, people see his success as the nation's success. Noynoy Aquino still enjoys that trust. He should build on it.
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