Gov’t urged to resolve pork barrel scam to save Noy’s rating

MANILA, Philippines - New York-based think tank Global Source Partners Inc. said the current administration should resolve the pork barrel scam issue if President Aquino wants to save his falling popularity ratings.

In a report, Global Source said  the President should refocus on his administration’s reform agenda before his term expires in 2016.

“The best case all around is a quick, satisfactory resolution of a complex issue that safeguards the image of the President as one hewing to the straight and narrow, thus allowing him to refocus on his reform agenda in the short time remaining in his term and to pave the way for a beneficial 2016 political transition,”  former Finance Undersecretary Romeo S. Bernardo and economist Marie Christine Yang noted on behalf of Global source.

After majority of the administration’s bets won in the mid-term elections earlier this year, the analysts said they expected the President to pursue the “harder reforms” in order to push the economy into a “higher and more inclusive growth trajectory.”

“To be sure, the economy still has momentum going for it and is shielded to some extent from the political mayhem as remittance and BPO (business process outsourcing)-driven consumption growth can be expected to keep it chugging along as before,” Bernardo and Tan said.

“Thus, even in a worst case scenario in which the government is paralyzed by a tug-of-war between the elected leaders’ inability to let go of an age-old system of patronage and the popular clamor to abolish pork barrel altogether, and with the President losing the moral high ground and unable to sway public opinion, economic growth remains likely to continue, albeit below par.”

The economy expanded by 7.6 percent in the first half of the year, above the government’s six to seven percent growth target.

The government said economic growth this year is still expected to settle within the target despite the devastation suffered by the Visayas region during the onslaught of Super Typhoon Yolanda.

Bernardo and Tan noted that the government’s efforts in its relief and rescue operations following Typhoon Yolanda will also weigh in Aquino’s diminishing popularity with the Filipinos.

“How the President handles the tragedy from Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), with millions of lives at stake and the world watching closely, can also spell the difference between his ability to continue governing effectively or losing credibility and becoming a feckless and increasingly lame-duck president,” the analysts said.

They noted that with the declining popularity of Aquino, who usually gets relatively high approval ratings, his “anointing power” will be useless come 2016 when the people votes for their next president.

As such, the scenario increases uncertainty whether the current reforms and policy enacted and being pursued by his government will be carried over after Aquino’s term.

“Given these, even as we expect growth to stay above trend in the short-term, we think that maintaining the current high consumer and business optimism may become more challenging, a risk to sustaining high economic growth further out,” Bernardo and Tan said.