BY MARLEN RONQUILLO: A CHANGE OF PHOTO-OPS. PLUS DEEPER SHIFTS
MANILA, APRIL 3, 2011 (MANILA SUNDAY TIMES) SUNDAY STORIES MARLEN V. RONQUILLO - PRESIDENT Aquino 3rd has enough popular support not to get stoned at an anti-government rally. There will be jeering and booing but no one would raise the first stone at the president. Because even the hard-core anti-Aquino forces know the political backlash from stoning a still popular president.
So joining a protest, (for example a march against oil price increases), where the president can hobnob with the poor, fiery masses with clenched fists and hungry stomachs, would not hurt the president a bit. In fact, it would be a perfect opportunity for him to reach out and feel the pain of the Filipino Everyman, who, with moist and anticipating eyes, voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Aquino in May.
After a few minutes, he can quit the march, extend his apologies to the organizers and go back to his day job of running the government.
At this point of his presidency, the most urgent thing that the president should do is to re-cement his ties with the Filipino Everyman, the Great Unwashed. As to why, the reasons are obvious.
All throughout his presidency, which is about to be one full year in July, President Aquino has devoted his time to the basic task of pushing the institutions within his executive branch to fulfill their respective mandates.
The public works department has been asked to lead the way in restoring the integrity of public bidding and awards. The revenue collection agencies are being asked to collect the right revenues. The economic managers are fusing spending plans with fiscal zeal and order. And told to lay out those grandiose investment and growth plans. Those concerned with justice and law and order have been ordered to see that justice is served and law and order reigns.
There is a subsidiary task attached: fight corruption as you perform your mandated task.
Focusing on the basic, in a sense, was the right thing to do. Over the past 12 years, these state agencies essentially went off-track. Naligaw ng landas.
In the course and process of doing all of these reform and pro-growth initiatives, however, President Aquino became, essentially, a one-dimensional president: the president of those who help him achieve his growth and reform initiatives. And these are essentially the private sector people—investors primarily—and the government people moving and shaking these reform and pro-growth programs.
The poor and the struggling masses have been rendered invisible, pushed deeper into peripheries of government concerns.
The photo-ops of President Aquino over the past several months are testament to the further marginalization of the poor and the marginal class. If he is not at the stock exchange to attend the listing of a new IPO, he is at a BPO site. If he is not attending to the concerns of foreign chambers of commerce, he is posing with smiling and ever hopeful young entrepreneurs.
Or, he is presiding over a cabinet meeting. Or, he is at the inauguration of a new power plant.
Nowhere in these photo-ops is a session with peasants brutally forced out of their farms by some corporate concern. Or a photo of the president with striking workers at a picket line. Or, a photo of him with the bloodied bodies of squatters just bodily removed from their slums.
Nowhere is a photo of the president commiserating with the poor, the oppressed and the exploited. These sectors, no one needs to tell the president, make up the majority of his people.
If there is a present-day Herblock, the cartoons of the President Aquino would look like this: an elitist president out–of-touch with the Everyman. Dismissive and disdainful of the wretched of his country.
The neglect of the poor may not be deliberate. It may not be the official and brutal policy of his government. But based on his collection of photo-ops, President Aquino 3rd has only two attitudes toward the poor: disdain for if not indifference to their plight.
The Everyman's jarring faces of despair over the past few days provided a perfect contrast to the president's preferential treatment and cozying up, if not for the moneyed class, to those who matter in Philippine society, the exalted likes of Washington Sycip.
Jeepney drivers in protest. The execution of three OFWs in China. The familiar tales of high corruption that leaves the poorest of the poor in a state of shock and awe over what those in power can do.
And where was the leadership of President Aquino in all of these? On the jeepney strike, the transport agencies were even ordering the poor jeepney drivers to back out of the strike. Or else, there would be a mass cancellation of public franchises.
While it is true that public transport franchises should be served come hell or high water, the strike was a direct result of the surge in fuel prices—and the perception that the government has been allowing the oil companies to recklessly and mindlessly jack up fuel cost at the expense of the suffering public.
That the aides of the president failed to come out with measures to cushion the impact of the fuel price surges on the small transport operators and the riding public added to the perception that the administration was either pro oil companies and anti-poor or just unconcerned about mass suffering.
What about the executed OFWs in China? On this, people tended to believe the worst—that the intervention from the Aquino administration was not enough and it was uninspired.
The current context provides an opportunity for the president to shift the locales of his photo-ops and change the economic class of the people he has been posing with. For once, he should reconnect with the salt of this earth.
----------------------------------------------------------
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2011 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
All rights reserved
----------------------------------------------------------
PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE [PHNO] WEBSITE
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/phnotweet
This is the PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE (PHNO) Mailing List.
To stop receiving our news items, please send a blank e-mail addressed to: phno-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Please visit our homepage at: http://www.newsflash.org/
(c) Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------
