MANILA, JANUARY 17, 2012
(STANDARD) EDITORIAL Never mind the messenger;
she's under hospital arrest about to be tried for her alleged sins.
If President Benigno Aquino III were half the Chief Executive he claims to be
or, at the very least, a shadow of the leader for which he was overwhelmingly
elected into office, he would focus on the message and not on who delivered it.
More politically-correct than the Bill Clinton slogan "it's the economy,
stupid" that won him the United States presidential race against the incumbent
George Bush Sr. in 1992, Gloria Arroyo's version—"it's the economy,
student"—still packs a wallop.
The statement drives a stake deep into the heart of the self-professed
economist-President's governance strategy of "pointing fingers and blaming
others after the fact."
"Student" or "stupid," the sentence means the same thing: there is an
inherent idiocy in lavishing the populace with what it wants all the while
neglecting what it truly needs. Conflict, whether against terrorism or
corruption, is but a pill that numbs but does not really cure.
Last year, the Aquino administration hailed its 2011 budget as one that would
pave the way for transformation.
At P 1.645 trillion, it was the first budget in 11 years that was passed in
time, the first to be approved by the Legislature with nary a cut of a single
centavo.
With P21 billion allocated for its Conditional Cash Transfer or dole program
and P15 billion for its Public-Private Partnership scheme, it was heralded as
the ultimate tool with which to fashion out social reform and economic growth.
The year ended and Mr. Aquino's 2011 "reform budget" turned out to be a dud.
There were no explosive increases in the employment statistics. By the end of
the third quarter, P142 billion of the programmed P242 billion for
infrastructure and capital outlay remained unspent.
Economic growth dipped to 3.6 percent, significantly lower that the
government's target of 4.5 percent and a far cry from its long-term goal of 7 to
8 percent yearly increase in national output.
The government blamed external factors—destructive typhoons, the Eurozone
debt crisis, the political turmoil in the Middle East, and the economic slowdown
in the US—though experts were at a consensus: it was the administration's weak
infrastructure spending that was to blame for the country's lackluster
performance.
Most of the Philippines' Southeast Asian neighbors performed better despite
the same external influences. The difference was leadership.
For 2012 Mr. Aquino will have another crack at his promise of reform and
development with a fresh P1.816-trillion budget, P34.9 billion for dole and
P22.1 billion as counterpart funding for various infrastructure and capital
outlay support.
The figures, as in the previous year, are impressive; their management,
however, is not.
The President must learn that going after the corrupt and managing the
economy are not mutually exclusive endeavors. They are both functions of good
governance that he often brags about.
He must realize that when the dust has settled, when all his enemies have
been decimated, and when the crowds have cheered themselves to exhaustion, Mr.
Aquino cannot escape judgment on his stewardship of the economy.
The moral is that defeat nurtures wisdom, and it's sometimes necessary for a
fallen foe to take an aging student to school to remind a sitting President that
the tail has wagged the dog long enough.
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE
HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
All rights reserved
PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS
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