Tuesday, August 4, 2015

WHAT ARE WE IN POWER FOR?


The term Doublespeak was inspired by George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Though the word itself does not appear in the novel, it evolved as a hybrid of the book’s Doublethink, or to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, and Newspeak, the new language designed to not only put emphasis on the positive, but to remove all shades in between extremes, thus, while the concept of bad may still exist, the word itself has been replaced with 'ungood', to establish the dominance of good. 

Doublespeak, therefore, is the propagation of Doublethink by use of Newspeak.

(From The World of Doublespeak by William D. Lutz)

In my youth I had difficulty grasping the concept expressed in the novel. But under the harsh reality of later adult life, I began to learn. Yet no experience was as illustrative of Doublespeak as the example yesterday afternoon, during the final State of the Nation Address of President Benigno Simeon Aquino III.

Not three minutes into his speech Aquino began with his usual staple of bashing the previous administration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, analogous to Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate, right down to the splashing on the wide screen the images of disgraced officials from the GMA period, a reminder of Aquino’s forte of trial by media, complete with screenshots of news items and statistics damaging to that administration. Emphasizing the fault of another in order to mitigate one's own shortcomings is Basic Doublespeak.

(Images from Nineteen Eighty-Four byUmbrella-Rosenblum Films

One should not put it against Aquino for trumpeting the supposed gains of his administration. After all, by its very name, this was to be an address of what state the nation was currently in. The cynicism came with the actual claims made in the speech.

Public Private Partnership.

Aquino’s first boast in our ‘journey along the Straight Path’ was the opening of the Muntinlupa-Cavite Expressway (MCX):

"...this is the first Public-Private Partnership project that we approved, and the first such PPP project opened to the public under our administration (English translation)."

There is no disputing the statement. But what Aquino fails to mention is that the MCX had been unnecessarily delayed for a year due to lack of oversight when right-of-way issues arose. The truth is out of the 50 PPP projects in his administration, at this late date, 27 are in the queue, 13 are still in the bidding stage, 10 have already been awarded but are delayed over different issues like Right-Of-Way, leaving a grand total of completed projects of . . . one. Since 2010 the Muntinlupa-Cavite Expressway is the first and only PPP completed, an accomplishment rate of 2% on Noynoy’s PPP record. Out of the 136 kilometers of new roads the DPWH says we need to ease our traffic holocaust, the MCX accounts for four kilometers. Granting one month of toll-free access cannot compensate for five years of sloth and inefficiency.

To add to the surreal atmosphere, Aquino compared the slow pace of PPP projects to the time it takes to deliver a computer. Unlike an order for a computer, the shipper does not sit on contracts like Aquino did as NEDA head where he ignored the approval of the NLEX-SLEX connector road since 2013, signing it only on February of this year after Liberal Party Ally Senate President Franklin Drilon complained about getting stuck in an expressway gridlock. 

To aggravate the situation vital projects like the Metro Manila Integrated Rail Terminal (a.k.a. Common Station) had been suspended for no other reason other than they were initiated by the hated Arroyo regime.

The K - 12 Program

When Aquino proceeded to attack his predecessor’s neglect of the country’s education, especially on classroom lack, it was predictable that he would lead to his K-12 Program, the new education curriculum that would add two years of Senior High School to the current four of Junior High to improve our standard of education.

As with most of this administration’s projects, it was a brilliant concept on paper but too little thought was devoted to obstacles that may occur, obstacles that, in fact, have been common knowledge for generations. Rushed into implementation, the promising program still faced a lack of classrooms (113,000 needed at the end of 2014), as well as a shortage of teachers, deficient teacher training, and defective educational aids like textbooks, among others.

Case in point is the Commission on Audit’s report that ‘due to lapses in oversight’ (again), the Department of Education wasted P608M in books meant for the old curriculum but are now obsolete because they were delivered just before implementation of K – 12.  

It was a case of good grain being sown on poor ground. But there is no glory in long-term remediation of a country’s ills like more classrooms and better-paid and better-trained teachers. No, what this audience needed was something flashy and spanking-new: The (fanfare plays) K – 12 Program.

This salute to the K - 12 program was capped by a 19-year old lady presenting her recorded testimonial of the new curriculum and ending with the words:

I'm proud that I'm a K to 12 graduate because I can now support my family. And I'm learning while I'm earning.

This was met with thunderous applause, of course. But it was hard to miss the collective confusion on some faces. How is it possible to graduate from a program that started only this year?


Economic Growth.

There was no let-up in the Arroyo-bashing:

Our predecessor took pride in "uninterrupted growth" during her last SONA. Scrutinize what she said, however, and you would realize that a significant portion of this growth was fueled by remittances from Filipinos who had lost hope in our country. As they say: People were voting with their feet. If I were to imitate that style of governance, I would be loath to claim a success borne of forcing my countrymen to escape our shores.

So how does Aquino stack up against his nemesis? He laid claim to an increase in jobs generated. Yes, indeed, there was an increase of 593,000 jobs – part time jobs. Full-time jobs fell by 130,000. Of the jobs that claimed to have increased by 1.2 million in 2014, 90% of that was informal employment.

It would be unthinkable for Aquino to acknowledge the efforts of our Overseas Franchise Workers, having derided their contribution to the economy earlier. But the truth is overseas deployment overtook local job generation. It is the OFWs plus the workers in volatile industries like tourism, BPOs and construction that are keeping this country’s head above the water.

Aquino’s counter to GMA’s ‘uninterrupted growth’ was his ‘inclusive growth’, thus, in a demonstration of the use of the non-sequitur, he rattled off a list of accomplishments like our improved credit rating, GDP growth and increase in Foreign Direct Investments, and even - I am not making this up - growth stemming from the imprisonment of three opposition senators. As before, none could dispute his data . . . and as before, he wasn't telling us the full story.

Despite the increase in FDIs, Vietnam has managed to overtake us as does the rest of ASEAN where FDI inflow is at a more rapid rate than Aquino’s ‘increase’. In truth, we are ranked 7th out of the 10 ASEAN members. GDP did grow in the early years of the Aquino administration, lulled by his assurances of The Straight Path, but by the time reality sank in, the growth slowed to 3.53%. The next rank above us, Thailand, is a distant 5.26%. We are doing worse than a country under Martial Law! (Wallace Business Forum).



As for inclusive growth, the dearth of FDIs and employment resulted in the top 5% oligarchy experiencing more growth from the lack of competition than the other 95% of the population, 53% of whom consider themselves poor in the Second Quarter of 2015, as per the Social Weather Station.   

MRT 3.

Said to be the most damning proof of the incompetence of the Aquino administration, being witnessed by millions taking the MRT daily, Aquino gives both barrels, firing one off at the previous administration for supposedly initiating the decay, and the other delivering the script provided to him by Department of Transportation and Communication (and Liberal Party acting President) Emilio Abaya, Jr. blaming the private owners of the system, MRT Holdings. Aquino claimed that MRTH entreated the DOTC to take over the maintenance of a deteriorating service. But the truth is that the two government banks, Land Bank of the Philippines and Development Bank of the Philippines, having controlling economic interest, ordered MRTH to turn over the MRT’s maintenance to DOTC, then under Aquino’s anointed one, Mar Roxas.

In short order, Roxas decided not to renew the contract of the regular maintenance provider Sumitomo Corporation (although they had been doing so for four times previously). Enter Jun Abaya who did not bother to have a regular bidding for a new contractor, but instead declared an ‘emergency procurement’ to justify his hiring PH Trams, a company less than a year old and undercapitalized headed by relatives of Liberal Party functionaries and a campaign manager of the Liberal Party. PH Trams was later replaced by APT Global, really PH Trams’ parent company.

So where did the deterioration begin? Sumitomo surrendered 72 working coaches and one inoperative coach to the DOTC when they took over in 2010. Today less than 10 coaches remain running. Despite a P57 million a month budget, no spare parts or rails were ever purchased by the DOTC, something Sumitomo had no problem with. Aquino claimed that the private owners neglected to perform maintenance in 2008 as required, but the MRTH presented records proving that maintenance was indeed carried out. By contrast, the DOTC has been unable to present a maintenance log since they took over, except for one covering a few months which they presented to a team of inspectors from the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railways visiting the country after the DOTC was pressured into allowing the inspections in the wake of a train which crashed through a concrete barrier in August of 2014. (The Hong Kong team was luckier than the MRTH, whose technical auditors were barred by the DOTC from inspecting critical systems.) It came as no surprise, then, that 2014 saw a four year high of MRT delayed trips.

The last straw in this barrage of hypocrisy surrounding the MRT was the way Aquino - who likes to harp about the ‘sins’ of the Arroyo administration - conveniently forgot another attack he made in his first SONA in 2011 where he castigated GMA for ordering the two government banks to buy out the MRT from the private owners. With his selctive memory, Aquino himself ordered Abaya to make the very same buyout. We already have a glaring example of how government manages (or mismanages) the maintenance of the MRT. It boggles the mind to imagine them fully in control.

Anything else?

The list of contradictions goes on and on, like the promised rice sufficiency contrasted by a Vietnamese dignitary jokingly requesting that we not buy so much rice from his country. The claim that the needs of the Haiyan/Yolanda survivors had been addressed, only to be questioned by the United Nations. (130,000 still living in tents and P170 Billion in relief funds still untapped). Even his very first claim in this SONA of no more wang-wang which symbolized the sense of entitlement which the powerful and connected of this country assume like a mantle knowing that their abuses will escape punishment is a hollow mockery set against our being the front-runner out of 59 countries with the worst impunity, beating even Mexico with all its drug cartel wars, making us worst in terms of structure of the security system of human rights.
                      (Impunity Index from the Impunity and Justice Research Center Unibersidad de las Americas in Mexico)

But the point is made. Aquino’s adeptness at Doublespeak is unmatched, turning the unpalatable into great leaps forward by the simple expedient of carefully editing his pronouncements.

But the neglect lays also in what he did not include in his SONA. There is, of course, the 44 policemen of the Special Action Force that perished in an operational SNAFU not unlike the Gallipoli disaster of the First World War, an operation Aquino was in on from the start, waiting in the wings to step forward once their target was captured. Also missing is the failure to have a Freedom of Information Act (thus our rank of 141 out of 180 in the Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders).

But there are more significant, if less dramatic, omissions. Foremost of these is the failure to amend the economic provisions of the Constitution, specifically the 60/40 foreign equity law, a throwback to the xenophobic 50s and 60s and further resurrected by the Communists that Cory Aquino released after EDSA I (thus ensuring that even true Communists like Vietnam and China overtake us). One despairs at Noynoy Aquino ever having the wherewithal to tamper with a Constitution nurtured by his own mother. So add this to the deplorable infrastructure, exorbitant electricity prices, punitive taxation, a frozen mining industry, and finally runaway graft corruption and crony capitalism (of which the Philippines is in 6th place worldwide according to The Economist’s Crony Capitalism Index), and we have a virulently toxic investment climate.

Troll Season.

Ever since the State of the Nation Address was delivered, pro-Aquino forces have intensified their efforts on social media. Whether they are paid hacks of Malacanang or just blind loyalists is academic. In a way, though, their efforts are often pitiful, like watching a loathsome person in pain. This is because beyond merely doing a copy/paste of the Palace’s press releases or the zombie-like ejaculations of ‘Noynoy is the best President!’, they present little in the way of counter arguments. At the most they make vague claims with no supporting data, like ‘how can you accuse PNoy of being sympathetic to the leftist militants when so many Communist fighters have been killed?' Ask for data, and there is silence.

Trolls tend to make their attacks personal and infantile instead, as seen in these typical non-sequiturs they like to spout:

1. If you know so much why don’t you be President?
2. That’s why our country never progresses. It’s people like you who do nothing but complain.
3. Aquino has done so much. What have you done?

Such predictability is easy to address, aside from saying: 'What kind of a dumb question is that?'

What have we done? We obey the law, we pay our taxes, we educate our children. What more do you want? We do what is expected of us. Can the same be said about Aquino? And as taxpayers we have the right to complain of the shoddy service we're paying for. We complain because we are powerless against an administration that thinks only of protecting its political allies. That’s all we can do. 

The phrase ‘What are we in power for? is usually associated with contemptuous and corrupt authority figures to justify their entitlement to self-enrichment. But the same question can also be asked in a benevolent vein. Moreover, it can be applied to the President. Yes, we know what must be done, but we’re not the President. Noynoy Aquino is the President. He could easily dismiss corrupt individuals and initiate urgent long-term projects instead of looking for instant gratification through populist approval points. He could take the advice of expert technocrats and not the bureaucrats who are his cronies. He should ask himself: What am I in power for? For my Party? Or for my Country?

Quo vadis, Noynoy?

The Aquino administration has been riddled with decisions based more on populist politics rather than actual national progress. Thus his decisions (or indecisions) are often grounded on what he believes will bring him the most public approval in the shortest time, as in 'within his term' to arrest his sagging popularity. Witness the government's MWSS blithely violating their contract with private water concessionaires when the latter wanted to implement their scheduled rate increase, even though this would impact not only on service quality, but on investor confidence. Aquino's move to freeze all new mining contracts was in response to the strident calls of pseudo-environmentalists looking for political capital. Worst of all is his lack of interest in amending the restrictive foreign ownership provision in the Constitution, thanks to the efforts of the anti-capitalist, anti-foreign militants.

True, he is stepping down, but he still needs to buttress his endorsement power for Mar Roxas, his designated successor, and so the battle for hearts and minds continues.

Aquino's need for public approval even manifests itself by his pandering to the masses with pop culture references in his last SONA. Whether he realizes it or not, his utterance of Eh, di, wow directed at his critics is one to express total detachment and ineffectuality over serious matters, and only reinforces his image of being a buffoon.

(Alfred E. Neuman, mascot of MAD Magazine)
It is still a matter of conjecture whether Aquino is consciously corrupt, or is merely a babe in the woods allowing himself to be led by the nose by opportunists who convince him that any advice they give him is for the good of the nation. Is he, in fact, a product of Doublethink where he actually believes the deceptive statements he delivers?

It is time he took a stand and became his own man. Aquino came to power despite an unqualified background, but he is there, so we have to deal with it. More accurately, he has to deal with it, because only he has the means to do so. He must overcome his reliance on his cronies who are undoubtedly a crutch to his insecurity, holding his trembling hand. Instead he must start to listen to the real experts: Businessmen, technocrats, political scientists. Anyone looking at his present cabinet of bureaucrats, hacks political hatchetmen and women will immediately see an absence of these qualifications. (Ironically, this had been his mother’s failing as well, again, due to inexperience.)

There had been some been some bitter laughter when Aquino proclaimed us to be the ‘the Darling of Asia’ last May, because no one could recall anyone outside of Malacanang ever bestowing that title upon us. There is less than a year left to his term, far too late to make many changes. But Aquino can still leave a legacy that is truly his own and not that of his cronies. Rather than trying to look good at the present, he must initiate reforms for long-term benefits lasting well past his or even the next administration.

He can start by firing that incompetent and corrupt DOTC Secretary and returning maintenance of the MRT to the private owners who had managed it successfully. Then he must open up the economy and take advice from the right people. Two changes he can make before he steps down. Once he gets that ball rolling, eventually we can be a true Darling and Tiger of Asia.


No comments:

Post a Comment