What about us?
This was the sentiment of the labor and transport sectors who felt left out in President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III’s first State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA) delivered Monday before the Joint Session of the 15th Congress at the Batasang Pambansa in Quezon City.
As this developed, Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo gave Aquino’s SONA a passing grade of 80 due to his failure to concretely address certain issues such as land reform, environment, and the Freedom of Information Bill.
“That’s a big problem because it means they (administration) don’t have programs for these things,” he told reporters in an interview.
In general, Pabillo said, Aquino’s SONA is okay, especially the part when the Chief Executive tried to be transparent to the public by reporting the irregularities in the previous government.
“It’s okay at least now there’s hope and there is also that attempt from the government to be clean and transparent,” he said.
While President Aquino briefly referred to the labor sector while discussing his administration’s policy on streamlining the approval of business permits to stimulate job growth, the labor sector said he failed to tackle their main concerns, particularly the growing unemployment rate in the country and the rampant labor outsourcing by some companies.
“A reminder to all: Creating job is foremost on our agenda, and the creation of jobs will come from the growth of our industries. Growth will only be possible if we streamline processes to make them predictable, reliable, and efficient for those who want to invest,” Aquino said in his SONA.
“We make sure that the Build-Operate-and-Transfer (BOT) project will undergo quick and efficient processes. With the help of all government agencies concerned and the people that used to take as short as a year and a long as decade will now only take six months,” he added.
Prior to the SONA the President Aquino tasked the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) to release a 22-point agenda addressing the main concerns of Filipino workers.
The three-page guideline focused on speeding-up the resolution of labor cases, protection of worker’s rights, solving the country’s job-mismatch and dealing with the concerns of overseas Filipino workers.
Former DoLE Undersecretary and University of the Philippines Center for Labor Justice Director Rene Ofreneo approved of President Aquino’s SONA in reforming the business sector through partnership with the private sector to create more jobs, but he said the President should have provided more details on how he intends to accomplish this.
“BOTs are helpful to the industry, but it also usually the source of corruption. The government should also prioritize passing the Freedom of Information Bill (FoI) and setting transparent bidding criteria to safeguard such projects,” Ofreneo said in a telephone interview.
BOT is an infrastructure financing scheme where a business receives a contract from public or private entity to fund its projects to recover its expenses to the project.
Ofreneo also said the SONA should have focused more on issues which have major impact on the country’s labor industry like tackling technical smuggling or undervaluation of imported goods and agrarian reforms, and attracting not only foreign but as well as local investors.
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said that despite the brief statement given by President Aquino to the labor sector, it is still willing to support him in pursuing his goals.
“It is too early to judge him and his administration. At this point, what he needs is everyone else’s help and cooperation to make this ‘process of change’ work for all of us,” TUCP spokesman Rafael Mapalo said in a statement sent via e-mail.
Meanwhile, the labor activist group, Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) was disappointed with the turnout of the SONA.
“I didn’t hear (from the SONA) any commitment to improve the lives of the basic sectors like better wages, real employment, and justice for the victims of the Arroyo administration. It is more business inclined which guarantee profit and not livelihood,” KMU Chairman Elmer “Bong” Labog said on a text message.
“His policy direction is aimed at massive privatization, deregulation, and liberalization,” Labog added.
At the transport front, the militant transport group Pinagkaisang Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operaytors Nationwide (PISTON) assailed President Aquino for excluding the “wishes” of the sector in his SONA.
PISTON secretary general George San Mateo echoed his colleagues’ disappointment over Aquino’s legislative agenda, wherein he excluded among his priority the passage of the FoI, the overturning of the Oil Deregulation Law, and of the Expanded Value-Added Tax Law.
“We are dismayed that President Aquino did not heed our call to invalidate the Oil Deregulation Law, which is the root cause of overpricing in petroleum products, as well as the EVAT Law. But we are more disappointed that he did not respond to our pleas to stop the toll hikes and implementation of EVAT on toll,” he said, even asking why the President failed to address the issues of the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement.
“The essence of public-private partnership plan is privatization: Privatization of infrastructures, mass transport, educational institution, among others. This plan is not at all different with what President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has implemented in the last nine years,” he added.
San Mateo said President Aquino’s SONA is incomplete. He did not even mention how he would implement genuine land reform, how he would go about the labor sector’s clamor for P125 across-the-board wage increase and the abolition of contractualization, and how he would create jobs for the people, Sa Mateo added.
Although PISTON appreciates the expose the President made on the alleged abuses of ranking officials of the Manila Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS), San Mateo said the President did not articulate how he will hold the same officials responsible for their abuses.
“While he also mentioned the irregularities in the spending of calamity fund, he however failed to state how he would go after those responsible. He did not directly implicated President Arroyo and her cronies to those illegal acts,” he added.
Different figure
Elena Bautista-Horn, former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s spokeswoman, Aquino’s SONA did not clarify which figures he was citing when he said only P100 billion remains in the annual budget.
Horn said Aquino’s figures are different from the official figures on government expenditures from January to June which were released by the Bureau of Treasury, the agency which records the actual spending of the national government.
The Bureau of Treasury released last July 21, when it was already under Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima, the official figures of the government’s actual disbursements from the national budget.
“For January to June 2010, total disbursements amounted to P788.8 billion, 13% higher than the comparable disbursements in 2009. Excluding interest payments, total disbursements increased by 16%. Actual disbursements in June amounted to P126.7 billion,” the bureau’s statement said.
Horn said Aquino should clarify how he arrived at the figures that only P100 billion in the national budget are available for his government for the remainder of the year, because the official figures indicate that about 49 percent of the P1.54 trillion national budget remains unspent.
Buckle down to work
Despite criticisms hurled by some sectors following his first SONA last Monday, Aquino found an ally in Vice President Jejomar Binay, who said that it is time to buckle down to work now that the President has identified the problems the country is facing.
Some political analysts have scored President Aquino’s SONA, saying that it exposed the previous administrations alleged anomalies but “lacked substance” in some priority areas like agriculture and housing, among others.
“We cannot really expect a detailed program or plans because that’s where the Departments will come in. May kasabihan [There is a saying that goes], now we have to do the job.The President gave the direction and what he wants. The direction is basically simple: ‘wag na ulit mangyari kung ano man yung masamang nangyari nung nakaraan [There should not be a repeat of the bad experiences that happened in the past],” Vice Presidential chief of staff Benjamin Martinez, Jr. told the Manila Bulletin in an interview on Tuesday. (With reports from Leslie Ann G. Aquino, David Cagahastian, and Madel R. Sabater) –SAMUEL P. MEDENILLA and KRIS BAYOS, Manila Bulletin
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