And now what?

The fall of the stock market and weakening of the peso should give the Aquino administration, still giddy from the country’s investment grade and strong growth figures, a reality check.

These developments show the vulnerability of the nation’s economic performance to external factors. Put another way, as President Aquino’s critics are pointing out, it shows that the administration cannot claim full bragging rights for positive economic news since 2010.

Even P-Noy’s model for his 2016 turnover plans, Brazil (particularly its hugely popular former leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva), isn’t looking too good these days. A planned increase in transport fares from 3 reals (about P60) to 3.20 triggered mass protests across the country against poor government services in general.

Nearly three years of mostly positive news cannot be dismissed as a fluke; the Aquino administration must be doing something right. It shows in the sustained high business confidence and, like it or not for critics, in the continuing high popularity of P-Noy midway through his term.

Investors and foreign observers continue to like the campaign against corruption, largely because if it succeeds, it’s good for business.

But their common observation is that corruption remains rampant at the lower levels of the bureaucracy, in local government units, and in economic activities where elective officials have a vested interest – which, in this country, is practically everything.

So the anti-corruption campaign must be sustained and expanded. Like the fruits of economic growth, however, the anti-graft drive must trickle down to the grassroots.

As a short-term measure against poverty, the conditional cash transfer also works and must be sustained. P-Noy’s task is to keep the program out of the clutches of politicians, who have continually devised ways of getting personal credit for the dole-outs.

Several beneficiaries of the cash transfer are now excluded, upon the recommendation of barangay officials, for siding with non-administration candidates in the May elections. Why are barangay officials, who are elected and have political affiliations, allowed to have a say in the selection of cash transfer beneficiaries?

P-Noy achieved the seemingly impossible and persuaded the 15th Congress to pass the reproductive health and sin tax reform laws. Now he must pursue the implementation of the RH program and collect the right excise taxes.

As one foreign observer told me yesterday, the new team has attracted positive international attention and generated sufficient confidence to earn investment grade for the nation.

Now investors and foreigners are waiting for the follow-through – the institutional strengthening, the systems and infrastructure upgrade.

After the P-Noy element has been factored in, the foreign observer told me, their question is, “And now what?”

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P-Noy’s forthcoming State of the Nation Address will be among the most keenly observed, for indications of where he plans to take the nation in the next three years.

On Monday last week the President met with his Cabinet for a full day to discuss what has been achieved so far and what must be done in the second half of his term to achieve sustainable, strong and inclusive economic growth.

The lengthy meeting was rare and fueled jokes that the monsoon rains, heavy flooding and horrendous traffic jams simply trapped P-Noy and his official family at Malacañang, as millions of people were trapped in traffic jams all over Metro Manila.

A week after that paralysis, there seems to be no solution in sight for the traffic problem.

Yesterday at noon, for example, the few tourists walking around Bonifacio Drive in Manila’s Port Area must have been baffled when the sidewalk parallel to the walls of historic Intramuros became a two-lane extension of the road.

Enterprising street people placed rocks at certain spots curbside to serve as crude ramps and collected P1 per vehicle driving in and another buck as each vehicle left the sidewalk.

If the northbound cargo trucks on their way to Manila’s container port could have squeezed in, they would have also used the sidewalk. But they were already stuck in the horrid traffic.

Along the grassy shoulder of the promenade, half-naked men slept or fanned themselves with soiled shirts, watching the vehicles intrude into their al fresco homes.

The traffic gridlock has become a regular occurrence in the area leading to the container port and Manila’s Gates of Hell, the charcoal-making bayside slums of Tondo. If you don’t know what hell in a very small place means, you should go to Manila’s Port Area during hours when the truck ban is not in place.

As the traffic built up yesterday, a few taxis led the way and entered the curb. Private vehicles soon followed, and the sidewalk itself was traffic-choked within minutes. It’s a wonder that the brick-paved sidewalk, designed as a promenade and not for vehicular traffic, has not caved in from the weight. But the bricks are surely damaged.

It was a scorching hot, humid noon so rain and flooding couldn’t have been the culprit for the gridlock. It was simply the inefficient system for the entry of trucks in Manila’s port, combined with non-existent traffic management.

It’s not the Gordian Knot; untangling the traffic gridlock should be on the Aquino administration’s list of doables.

Instead the regular gridlock is a microcosm of the state of the nation: a lot of economic activity, stalled and stuck in uncertainty by system failure, and making little difference in the lives of the dirt-poor.