Misery

Maybe the columnists are also to blame for this.

The Business Expectation Survey conducted quarterly by the Bangko Sentral shows dramatic erosion in business confidence. In the fourth quarter of 2010, the business confidence index stood at a high of 50.6 percent. In the first quarter of 2011, this dropped to 47.5 percent. By the second quarter of 2011, the index dropped precipitously to only 31.8 percent.

There is no discussion about why this is happening in Edwin Lacierda’s fabulous “information loop.” It may be because this “loop” prefers to see only the good news — and because of that increasingly resembles Gadhafi’s information apparatus.

The BSP survey amplifies the findings of the most recent SWS findings about unemployment - 27.2 percent of respondents to the SWS survey declare themselves jobless. The number was only 20.5 percent on the day President Aquino assumed office.

In real numbers, the SWS survey results indicate that 11.3 million Filipinos are unemployed; 2.8 million were added to the ranks of the unemployed since Aquino took over. Presumably, more were added to the ranks of the unemployed since the survey was taken in the first week of March since hundreds of thousands graduated from school in April.

Unemployment and business confidence are not unrelated events. If businessmen are not confident enough to invest, the unemployment figure will simply swell at a rate higher than our spectacular population growth. With greater unemployment comes greater public misery. No inflated (and inflationary) conditional cash transfer program will relieve that growing misery.

There are any number of factors (excluding opinion writers) conspiring to produce what now appears to be an alarming macroeconomic trend.

Economist Ben Diokno has warned against the administration’s obsessive pursuit of deficit-reduction at the expense of compressing public sector spending. The compression of public spending reins in economic expansion and prevents our domestic economy from creating the jobs that will relieve public misery.

Despite all the talk about public-private partnerships, no major infrastructure project has yet taken off even as a number of infra projects approved by the previous administration were aborted for “rebidding.” The Laguna Lake dredging project, financed by the EU was inexplicably cancelled by the administration — causing our government to be dragged to the international arbitration court by Belgium. That project alone might have created tens of thousands of urgently needed jobs.

In his first State of the Nation Address, President Aquino specifically mentioned selling Philippine Navy land to make way for a major residential-commercial investment. No sooner had the ink on the agreement dried when the Palace suddenly decided to shelve the deal. This is but one of many similar whimsical decisions that bring businessmen to grief.

In his next State of the Nation Address, President Aquino might want to unveil both a comprehensive employment generation plan and a competition strategy that will improve investor confidence in our economy. Those two items alone should generate greater interest than any further talk about the President’s desperate plan to wed while in office.

Irony

Every night, I suspect, Edwin Lacierda sticks his foot into his mouth and conjures up another gaffe to commit the next morning.

The other day, this unelected Palace functionary found the gall to order a senator of the realm to immediately bring the matter of postponing ARMM elections to plenary vote and not “kill” the bill at committee level. That unfortunate utterance unmasks the imperious elements of the Palace conspiracy to deploy their superior numbers to force through the measure at plenary rather than allow dissenting voices from the affected constituencies to be heard. It so haughtily transgresses the independence of the Senate.

Next Tuesday, Senator Ferdinand R. Marcos, as chair of the Senate local governments committee, will conduct a public hearing on the proposal to postpone legally mandated regional polls. That public hearing will allow the views of hundreds of civil society organizations at the ARMM to be finally aired rather than suppressed by Malacanang’s miscommunications group. They will have the opportunity to say the people of the region want election, not selection, for officials of what is after all an autonomous local government.

Over the past few weeks, Senator Marcos has been conscientiously doing his work on the issue at hand. He has listened to local leaders at the ARMM and conferred with constitutional experts about the Constitutional fealty of the proposed measure. He has, we must say, performed as a true democrat, resisting pressure to railroad the Palace-sponsored measure while ensuring the Senate observes accountability to the electorate.

I wonder if Lacierda’s mind enables him to grasp the great irony of this situation.

Senator Marcos’ father was overthrown by a popular uprising. During the Cory Aquino administration, his family was vilified and persecuted. Yet, today, he stands as the main defender of two important legacies of Cory Aquino: the 1987 Constitution and the grant of autonomy for Muslim Filipinos.

In contrast, Cory Aquino’s son did not bother to argue the existence of whatever emergency to merit the measure postponing ARMM elections as urgent. He did not bother to justify why the proposal to have the Palace appoint people to posts that were otherwise elective does not make a mockery of the grant of autonomy. He did not bother to tell us why this drastic measure does not violate the Constitution.

There are not rumors circulating indicating that Senator Marcos could be removed from his committee chairmanship to enable the President’s allies to railroad the measure. If that happens, let us make sure that history is not rewritten by the likes of Lacierda. Senator Marcos ended up on the crosshairs of Palace operatives because he insists on democratic consultations and impeccable observance of constitutional provisions.