‘No more Payatas boys in next SONA’

It is time to go beyond the "Payatas boys" and focus on larger issues.

With 85 percent of the goals she set in her maiden State of the Nation Address (SONA) accomplished, President Arroyo said much applauded 10-year-old boys Jomar Pabalan, Jayson Vann Banogan and eight-year-old Erwin Dolera will not make an appearance in this year’s SONA.

The three young boys are the sons of three different squatter families displaced by the trash slide in the former Payatas dump site in Quezon City. They, and the wishes they had set afloat on paper boats in the hopes the President would see these fragile craft, were part of the President’s first SONA last year.

In a television interview with Net 25, the President said the three Payatas boys would no longer appear at her SONA this July 22, at the Batasang Pambansa complex, during the opening of the joint second regular session of Congress.

The President also spoke of the specific assistance — fulfillment of the boy’ wishes as inscribed on the paper boats that found their way to the Palace — and the community assistance given to the other Payatas families by various government agencies, led by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

Meanwhile, Sen. Gregorio Honasan Jr. twitted the President yesterday on her planned SONA speech: "We in Congress share our people’s expectations that President Arroyo will render a report on the ‘real’ situation facing the nation as this is the only way we can come up with a meaningful solution to the many problems besetting our people."

In a statement, Honasan cautioned the President "not to delude herself with phony statistics and dubious accomplishments supplied by her cordon sanitaire and sycophants who want (to do) nothing more than to insulate her administration from the genuine needs and aspirations of the Filipinos."