EDITORIAL - Presidential priorities

On the same day that President Aquino was all over the news demonizing Chief Justice Renato Corona and threatening to rain fire and brimstone on the Senate if it fails to find him guilty in his impeachment trial, the following news items also appeared:

1) Mindanao could suffer four to eight-hour rolling blackouts in summer due to the unavailability of power reserves in the grid. Right now the island is already experiencing up to four hours of blackouts.

2) A total of 22,760 nursing graduates passed the latest licensure board exams and will be joining the jobless in an already saturated market where, just to gain experience and avoid staying idle, they will be forced to volunteer their services for free.

3) Assistant US secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Kurt Campbell has expressed serious concern over continued extrajudicial killings involving security forces in the Philippines.

4) Some very important persons behind bars at the New Bilibid Prisons continue to enjoy perks while corruption, prostitution and other anomalies continue to hound the facility despite Aquino having placed a new man at the helm.

The reason for the enumeration of these stories, all within the window of a single day, is to place into context the state of the nation that begs for immediate presidential attention, even as the president seems overwhelmingly focused on something else.

These four stories encompass four serious but continuing issues — power shortage, unemployment, crime, corruption — which Aquino has allowed to fester as he focuses his attention elsewhere.

A growing number of Filipinos are increasingly getting convinced that Aquino does not have a firm grasp of what presidential priorities ought to be, judging by his inordinate interest in pursuing his political agenda to the detriment of broader and deeper national issues.

Oh, by the way, on the same day (Friday, February 17) that these stories appeared in the news, a fifth item deserves worthy of some mention, since it is only the second thing that has the attention of Aquino: The privacy of Grace Lee’s mother is starting to worry the president.