P-Noy and Joe America

Today P-Noy makes his report to his boss, the sovereign Filipino people, through their representatives in Congress.

I suppose he will talk about his effort to inculcate the Daang Matuwid on the bureaucracy. He will likely mention the Corona impeachment and why it was necessary. He will also talk proudly of the improved investment climate and the high hopes expressed by economic analysts from all over the world about our being a breakout nation.

As he delivers his SONA this afternoon, people will listen to how he chooses his words, watch his facial expressions and scrutinize what he says and fails to say. People will be looking for signs of how he has grown into his job. Those who want him to succeed will look for positive clues that he is indeed the leader we need. Those who dislike him will surely find enough things wrong to reinforce their negative feelings.

As I had written on my Facebook wall some weeks ago, I choose to give critical support to P-Noy simply because he has to succeed for our sake. It makes no sense to write him off now and waste three more years until the next president… who by most indications will be a replay of Ate Glue. I criticize him to nudge him when I think he needs nudging but undermining P-Noy now delays progress and is unpatriotic in the end.

Honesty is not an issue with P-Noy. I believe after his term he will return to the Times Street home of his parents and pick up the rather simple life he had before we elected him to the Presidency. Like his mother, the late President Cory, there will be no unexplained wealth issue that will dog him when he leaves office.

My fear about P-Noy is his small circle of advisers and his inability to expand his pool of talent beyond his kabarkada. But P-Noy has his heart in the right place.

Last week, one of my old college friends, Steve Salonga, the son of former Senator Jovito Salonga, pointed out a blog of a retired American banker married to a Filipina who has chosen to live the rest of his life here. Writing under the pen name Joe America, the blogger apparently loves this country a lot and has been following events here with a keen eye. I take it from his blog that he lives in Leyte.

It was interesting to read the views of a foreigner who provides a perspective wider than many of us who had been living here all our lives. I read a few of his blogs and I don’t agree with some of his views but in general, Joe America really gets it about our country.

Joe America’s view of P-Noy is interesting. I want to share portions of it with my readers today. It was eerie how he seems to have taken the words right out of my mouth. This is how he feels about P-Noy.

“Here is a guy who had no plans to be president. He was, and remains, a soft guy. Not dynamic and outgoing. An introvert. The son who grew up to be passive. Unmarried. Just minding his business and keeping the family name in the Senate. Then, in six short months, he was thrown into the highest and most difficult job in the land by the passions of a people who longed for the goodness of his Mom.

“Early on, he had a decision to make. Did he have that kind of ambition or not? He went to a retreat by himself. Reflected. Returned and said, ‘Okay, let’s make the Philippines a less corrupt place.’

“Now he has been in office a couple of years and the cushy armchair quarterbacks, angry that their guy got defeated by an adored dead woman, STILL are complaining that President Aquino is not Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and JFK rolled into one, with a little Jesus Christ sprinkled on for spice.

“Well, you know what, I like my President the way he is. With character.

“I like his face because it can be a smile or a sneer, and no one really knows for sure. Hong Kong thought he was laughing when he was suffering from indigestion caused by the incompetence of the police who, unfortunately, report through about five layers directly to him. So he was stuck explaining to Hong Kong why a bus massacre was botched and what was going to be done about it.

“I like the way he walks, kind of stooped and with a hitch in his gait like his boxer briefs may be one size too small. He wears those formal Filipino shirts, the see-through kind that are cool. In more ways than one.

“People say he plays computer games and sleeps in and has girlfriends and likes a nice car himself. I wouldn’t know because I couldn’t care less. I hope he does all those things. Like a real person, you know? Not some plastic dummy like Mitt Romney who is forever posturing like a robotic mannequin whose batteries are over-juiced. Talk about silly putty, molding itself to the shape of the electorate’s latest poll numbers.

“No, President Aquino is real. Like me. Like you.

“The thing is, he is doing so much RIGHT. It just gets buried in the media obsession about conflict and confrontation.

“He has visited all the key Asian neighbors to open up lines of communication. He has achieved a firm balance with China, neither rolling over nor being belligerent, and always with an eye toward the greater value of robust trade between the two countries. The relationship with the US is in balance. Mutually beneficial. Copasetic, man, copasetic.

“He has stabilized the finances of the nation and attracted a lot more investors to the Philippines. The Philippine stock market is roaring, the peso is stronger than it has been in years.

“And although the anti-corruption agenda looks like so much directionless confetti floating through the air, it has a decided drift, and the direction is down. Down with sloppy SALN’s and people with their hands in the public cookie jar, or pork jar, come to think about it. Down with illegal kickbacks on government projects. Up with expenses for transportation infrastructure.

“I laugh when people cast the presidents of the US and Philippines as responsible for the prices they pay at the gas pump. These are people who believe the pillow they smash against the wall in anger is responsible for their problems. No. The pillow just happened to be at hand. Just like the President.

“Here are some intractable problems. The solution will require many administrations. Electricity. Water. Congestion. Global warming. Corruption. Education.  Gas is a commodity, in short supply; it is not infrastructure. You ought to pay what the market demands, not some subsidized, regulated price that warps the true economic value of the stinky useful stuff.

“Gloria Arroyo did not do enough. She was too busy chasing President Obama for photo ops, and arranging favors like Chief Justice appointments, plotting to re-write a perfectly good Constitution, making sure her face was plastered on a million road-construction signs across the country, handing out bags of cash to legislators, and (allegedly) scheming with her husband for kickbacks and rigging of elections.

“President Aquino is not such a wayward man. He is serious about improving the Philippines. He is content to let his sister work on the family name’s flair. He has no need to get richer, illegally.

“Does he do everything I wish?

“I wish the President would make a manly statement about the RH Bill and use his influence to get it passed. For the women of the Philippines. And to shout lima charlie (army for loud and clear) to the Catholic Church, ‘help us manage the Philippines to less poverty or get left behind...’

“I wish he would clean up Customs, a den of thieves thicker than the huddle around the heroin hookah in a dark alley of the Kasbah.

“But look. He is my President.

 “I want him to succeed. I don’t want to try to look superior by inspecting him for everything that goes wrong… Let me tell you, the Philippines looks better than it has in a long long long long time…

If the President were in my foxhole, I’d watch his back, like any private is smart enough to do. If he is in the Palace, I’ll do the same.

“That’s because I trust that he is watching mine.

“I KNOW he is watching mine.”

Low bat

This one is from Gilbert J.

A young man saved his girlfriend’s phone number on his mobile as “LOW BATTERY”.

Whenever she calls him in his absence, his wife takes the phone and plugs it to the charger.

Give that man a medal!  

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco