PRESIDENT BENIGNO "NOYNOY" AQUINO III
Manila, Philippines – President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III gave his 2nd State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday, July 25, 2011
As shown live on local TV that day, President Noynoy Aquino delivered his SONA 2011 with Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. behind him.
PNoy’s 2nd SONA was attended by top local politicians including former President Fidel V. Ramosand Joseph “Erap” Ejercito Estrada, as well as Vice President Jejomar Binay, senators and congressmen.
***New President’s SONA is a breather and gives hope to millions of Filipinos.***
President Noynoy Aquino’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) then proceeds to give a glimpse of the current state of the country based on what they have found in their initial assessment of the country.
Among those that President Aquino’s SONA mentioned as among the anomalies during Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’ term includes the over importation of rice where rice stocks ended up rotting in warehouses, excessive perks of high officials of the GSIS, 130 million pesos of classroom funds, and other missing appropriations that were not delivered or used for other purposes.
“We had been deliberately deceived on the real status and condition of our country,” says Aquino during his SONA. He is referring to how Arroyo and her cohorts tried to paint good picture of the country when in fact they are siphoning government funds.
He summarized what had happened by saying that 90% of the 2010 budget are already spent and only 10% remains. President Aquino says that there leaves the government about 1% to be spent in the next months for the new administration.
President Noynoy Aquino’s SONA then proceeded on how his administration will change all of this. He mentioned about the rehabilitation of watersheds and dams and the protection of the environment, a peace process that is fully supported and a fast resolution to extra-judicial killings.
President Aquino said that his government will be based on transparency and good governance and that corruption will no longer be a culture. He also said that government processes will be made faster so that services can be delivered easily.
President Aquino also mentioned major infrastructure and modernization development in which the government will not be spending a centavo. Among these projects is the proposal to develop an expressway running from Manila passing to Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, and Cagayan Valley.
Another proposal, President Aquino says is the possible lease of the Navy headquarters in Roxas Boulevard and the Naval Station at Fort Bonifacio. The proposal states that the investor will pay for the cost of the transfer of the Navy Headquarters to Camp Aguinaldo. In exchange the investor will immediately give $100M. In addition to that, Aquino also said that the investor will also give shares of the company earnings to the government.
Another very concrete plan of action is in fast tracking business application. President Aquino in his SONA said that documents needed for business application will be brought down from 36 to 6 and the number of pages of the application form from 8 to a single page.
Other noticeable changes which President Noynoy Aquino delivers in his SONA were the increase in the number of years for Basic Education in the Philippines which he propose to be elevated to the 12-years global standard, funding for classrooms, service contracting through the GASTPE, increase in the conditional cash transfers to help poor students, and an increase in the coverage of PhilHealth (a Philippine health care plan).
There were other changes and also Bills which the new President asked the help of the House of Representatives and the Senate. He calls on them to help pass his legislative agenda. LYN
"ASSESSMENT OF PRES. AQUINO'S 2ND SONA"
The State of the Nation Address (SONA) is an annual event in the Philippines where the President addresses the status of the nation. On July 26, 2011 President Aquino presented the address in Manila.
He said:
· Getting rid of the use of the wang-wang (which symbolized abuse of authority) is a major step in changing the Philippines
· The Philippine's still has exclusive sovereignty over the South China Sea aka. "West Philippine Sea"
· The government is fighting hunger and poverty--with survey showing hunger decreasing from 20.5% to 15.1% from May to June
· Business and the economy in the Philippines is improving as evidenced by a boom in investors and new businesses
· Aquino encouraged citizens to pay the proper amount in taxes
· The nation is increasing security and the people are "ready to protect themselves"
· The unemployment rate went from 8% to 7.2%
Validity of Aquino's facts and Figures
Despite the continuing decline in the people’s satisfaction and approval of his performance as President, Benigno S. Aquino III claims that he is not worried. “I’m really not concerned with the popularity. It will go up and down,” Aquino said in reaction to the latest survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS). The SWS reported that the net satisfaction rating of the President fell to +46% in June from a high of +64% in November 2010. A separate survey by Pulse Asia also shows a similar trend. The approval rating of Aquino dipped to 71% in May from 79% in October 2010.
Aquino, however, is missing the point. The issue is not popularity.
If President Aquino is facing a decline in the SWS and Pulse Asia performance surveys, it’s not because of bad public relations. It’s not simply “a weakness in messaging” as Aquino put it. The emerging trend in his satisfaction and approval ratings as President is about policy. People expected him to address their most urgent issues – livelihood, jobs, and prices. After a year, he has not only failed but even exacerbated the plight of the people.
Soaring prices
Worse, Aquino’s pantawid programs are not only gravely inadequate even as relief measures. His main policies are also gravely anti-poor. He ordered the National Food Authority (NFA) to hike the price of its rice by P2 to 4 a kilo. The move was part of the gradual privatization of the agency’s functions. Aquino also refused to control spiraling prices and ignored calls to scrap the 12% value-added tax (VAT) to at least mitigate the impact on consumers. That will turn-off investors and creditors, he said.
Consequently, since Aquino’s inauguration, households are now paying P107 more for an LPG tank while jeepney drivers saw their daily income fall by more than P340. Households consuming 200 kilowatt-hours (kWh) are now shelling out an additional P86 to pay MERALCO and NAPOCOR. Households consuming 30 cubic meters are now paying P97 more to Manila Water and P224 more to Maynilad.
On jobs
But as far as Aquino is concerned, jobs are being created. In his SONA, he mentioned that the unemployment rate in April went down to 7.2 percent in April 2011 from 8 percent during the same period last year, crediting the efforts of his administration. Some 1.4 million jobs have been supposedly created in his first year. The numbers are from the Labor Force Survey (LFS) of the National Statistics Office (NSO).
The 1.4 million jobs supposedly created between April 2011 and April 2010 could not be attributed to government intervention. In the first place, the only job generation program that the Aquino administration has so far initiated is the Community Based Employment Program (CBEP). This program has only created 170,000 jobs out of a target of 1.1 million. About 63 percent of these jobs are in infrastructure/construction, of low quality, and highly temporary. The 170,000 could even be deceitful because a worker can avail of more than one CBEP job.
Looking at the NSO data, more than 456,000 jobs of the 1.4 million additional jobs are classified as those who worked for private households (domestic help, etc.), self-employed without any paid employee (vendor or sari-sari store owner, etc.), employer in own-family operated farm or business, and worked without pay in own-family operated farm or business. In other words, a significant part of the additional employment in the past year was due to the people’s “sariling diskarte” and not because of any meaningful job generation program of government.PEY
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