Direction

So far, so good… this sums up the state of President Aquino, midway through his six years. There are no threats to his hold on power, unlike in the two previous administrations or during his late mother’s watch. His survey ratings have dipped but remain high – also unusual; all his predecessors since 1986, including his mom, saw steep drops midway through their presidency.

Following in the footsteps of others, the last major international rating agency is expected to upgrade soon its assessment of the Philippines’ creditworthiness to investment grade. Business optimism remains high, but P-Noy knows what’s wrong with this picture: the optimism is not translating into enough jobs, and investment grade has not meant actual investment.

The poor are still poor: poverty levels remained the same for six years until the first quarter of 2012, and economic growth is not inclusive. The exodus continues of Filipinos seeking greener pastures overseas for lack of opportunities in their own country. In many economic aspects, we’re still the laggard among the original founders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

 Not so good, could be better… that’s the state of our nation, midway through P-Noy’s term.

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The anti-corruption message is taking time to trickle down the ranks of the bureaucracy, especially at the local level. Certain real estate developers, for example, grouse about the voluminous red tape they need to hurdle, with each step an opportunity for corruption, before a project can get underway. For many elective officials, it’s business as usual; they don’t know what daang matuwid means.

After three years, P-Noy, still with guns blazing, is doggedly going after those suspected of corruption… if they were part of previous administrations, especially Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s. The accused in these cases are guilty unless they can prove their innocence.

On the other hand, when accusations of wrongdoing are hurled against officials or political allies of daang matuwid, the immediate administration reaction is denial, and the presumption of innocence is dredged up. The government then goes hammer and tongs… against the accuser.

If P-Noy wants to spare no one in his anti-corruption campaign, he should avoid sending the message to potential complainants and whistle-blowers that if his officials ask for a commission, cut, “facilitation fee” or whatever metaphor is in vogue, the victim should either pay up or shut up.

 To get his anti-corruption message across, P-Noy, according to one news feature, wants to see a big fish convicted of graft. But this objective is at the mercy of a judicial system that is often seen as a major hindrance to national progress.

P-Noy is delivering his fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA) today with the operations of US logistics giant Federal Express stopped by the Court of Appeals. The CA ruled with finality last week that FedEx’s international freight forwarding is a public utility service where foreign ownership is restricted. Who knew? FedEx, which has been operating here for as long as I can remember, shut down a few years ago its hub in the Subic Freeport Zone and relocated to China. The CA order could end the company’s Philippine operations altogether.

 In his SONA last year, P-Noy announced only a handful of priority legislation on his wish list. The two most difficult were passed: the sin tax reforms and the reproductive health law. The RH law is frozen in the Supreme Court.

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Despite a scandal over the utilization of the congressional pork barrel, Malacañang has retained the Priority Development Assistance Fund in the proposed 2014 national appropriation. This signals P-Noy’s acknowledgment that he will need to maintain a healthy relationship with the 16th Congress, short of dancing the Cha-cha.

 The initiative to amend the Constitution through legislation now looks stillborn after the Rodriguez brothers proposed the two items that previous Charter change efforts have shown to be the surefire way of killing the initiative: the lifting of term limits, and a shift to a parliamentary form of government. We can hear P-Noy saying, I told you so.

 But the reform initiative can still be saved if P-Noy certifies legislative measures whose objectives may be in confluence with the economic provisions proposed for Cha-cha. Circumventing constitutional restrictions by legislation seems to be preferred to Cha-cha; this has been done in the past, in mining and real estate development, for example. P-Noy can also give priority to the anti-trust law, the Land Use Act and the modernization of the Bureau of Customs.

 Whatever route P-Noy decides to take to make the nation more business-friendly and internationally competitive, his SONA should provide a clear picture of where he wants to take the nation in the second half of his term.

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His first SONA was an extension of his inaugural address and campaign battle cry, which emphasized the fight against corruption. Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap. We still have a lot of both, but to be fair, how much can be done in three years?

 P-Noy is expected to promise that the best is yet to come. The best that can be done in another three years is to lay the groundwork for improvements, and to consolidate and entrench reforms achieved since 2010 so that whoever becomes president in 2016 cannot risk the public backlash of reversing the reforms.

There’s precious little time to complete new infrastructure; P-Noy may have to make do with groundbreaking ceremonies. Three years may also not be enough to deal with the energy shortage in Mindanao (and a looming one, we were warned by energy experts) in Metro Manila.

There are bright sports, notably business process outsourcing. But we will need more investments in education if we want to upgrade our status from the world’s best in voice BPOs to the best in knowledge BPOs. The room for growth is also vast in agribusiness – even Vietnam is beating us here.

Surely P-Noy reads the annual report of the Joint Foreign Chambers, which lists areas for growth including tourism and entertainment, and tracks the progress of their proposals.

  At every SONA, people ask: Is the nation better off today than a year ago? Not much has changed since SONA 2012. In this SONA for the second half of the P-Noy administration, a bigger question is, where do we go from here? Will we ever achieve our full potential?

 Considering all our problems, the nation has done OK in the past three years. We can do much better.