The second life

Aside from the rare show of emotion, what else did the “bosses” get from employee Noynoy Aquino in his fifth State of the Nation Address?

More interesting is what we didn’t get: there was no more harangue of the judiciary led by the Supreme Court over its scrapping of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

Well and good; President Aquino appears ready to let go of his beloved but controversial stimulus program, although unsurprisingly, projects that warranted special mention in his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) were DAP-funded.

Also missing from the SONA was any clear indication that P-Noy intended to jettison members of his official family who are weighing him down with underwhelming performance or corruption-related controversies. Unless people want to read more into the officials who were not cited in the SONA for their work, among them Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala.

It looks like we’ll be having more of the same from the same old faces. Live with it: this was P-Noy’s message to his carping critics, who (according to him and his rah-rah boys) are merely in the minority.

Also missing from the SONA were specific plans to deal with slowing growth and factors that can aggravate the deceleration, such as the looming energy crisis. But P-Noy has never been big on vision.

As the name implies, the SONA is a summation of where the nation stands, in the eyes of the person making the assessment. That happens to be the president of the republic, so of course he will focus on achievements of his administration.

 Half an hour into the 90-minute fifth SONA, P-Noy was still reciting those achievements, and reminding the nation – with good reason – of how much had changed since he assumed power.

But there were also points when he seemed to be lost in Wonderland in his praise for certain Cabinet members or programs, such as his government’s initial response to the onslaught of Super Typhoon Yolanda. Rehabilitation czar Panfilo Lacson sat stone-faced in the audience (OK, Lacson always looks stone-faced) as he was cited by P-Noy.

The mention of old times with Vice President Jejomar Binay fighting the coup pals of President Cory’s time was intriguing. With several members of Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance praising the SONA, UNA had to clarify yesterday that it was not exploring an alliance with the administration.

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From Day One P-Noy has indicated he can’t wait for his latest responsibility to be over so he can get his life back.

That aspect of Noynoy Aquino the laid back only son – a quiet guy who likes cigarettes, guns, fast cars and (from what we’ve seen so far) quick romantic liaisons – bubbled up to the surface in those choke-provoking SONA lines he ad-libbed about Filipinos being worth dying, living and fighting for.

Now P-Noy is contemplating his mortality, to the visible distress of youngest sister Kris.

The near tears and breaking voice might have played well to drama-loving Pinoys, but the bosses expect their employee to work two more years, and the most pressing concerns were not sufficiently addressed in the SONA. These include the power crisis, rising food prices, and the paralysis at the Manila port that is dampening investments.

Even before assuming his post, Noynoy Aquino had tried to lower the unusually high public expectations that accompanied his dramatic ascent to power. Derided by critics as the beneficiary of “necropolitics,” the black swan memorably said in one TV interview that he didn’t think he was elected for his competence or management skills.

In his second to the last SONA, P-Noy reminded his bosses of the initial expectations when he was being persuaded to run for president: “They told me that they did not expect me to solve all the country’s problems in a span of six years. They simply asked me to begin the change.”

He’s done that now and “we have far surpassed the aspirations,” he said in his SONA, and “I am content.”

P-Noy may be content, but the people are not and expect more, more, more. In addition to realistic expectations that he must address ASAP, P-Noy must also contend with perceptions that a president has unlimited energy and the answer to everything in this country. Live with it, P-Noy.

After the 1987 coup attempt that killed his aide and left him with serious injuries, P-Noy says he’s now in his second life. Considering his father’s life and the series of coup attempts when his mother Corazon was president, it’s reasonable for P-Noy to wonder if his second life might one day end with a bomb blast.

Anything is possible in this country, of course, but at this point such plots seem as farfetched as the success of any attempt to oust him through impeachment.

The campaign for the 2016 presidential race is just over a year away. P-Noy’s political opponents are ready to sit it out until the general elections. Assassinating or even impeaching a president so late in his single, six-year term is not worth the enormous trouble.

P-Noy can take comfort in this thought and focus on the work ahead. Two years is a long time; there’s a wide room for more changes before he bows out.

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