‘P-Noy’s inordinate focus on convicting Corona affecting economy’

MANILA, Philippines – President Aquino’s “inordinate focus” on convicting Chief Justice Renato Corona and his vindictiveness are already taking their toll on the economy and urgent legislative work, lawmakers said yesterday.

Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, an independent, urged Aquino not to sacrifice governance for his campaign to convict Corona, who is being tried in the Senate for alleged betrayal of public trust and culpable violation of the Constitution.

Opposition lawmakers, led by House Minority Leader and Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez, noted that the Aquino administration seems to be only good “in their determination to blame anybody and everybody else for the country’s problems.”

Lagman said “the collateral damage of the impeachment proceedings on governance and legislation is becoming inevitable.”

“While the national growth has plunged to 3.7 percent last year, which is much slower than the 7.6 percent gross domestic product (GDP) expansion in 2010, and the number of hungry Filipinos has escalated to 4.5 million from 4.1 million last September, the Aquino administration has marshaled its time and resources to an agenda of ousting the Chief Justice,” the Albay lawmaker said.

He said the implementation of national policies to address poverty and hunger may be stalled and the bailout of the fledging economy may fall by the wayside as all the guns of the Aquino administration are aimed at the Chief Justice’s head.

Lagman stressed that the poor are not concerned with alleged high profile transgressions of the elite officialdom except as a television extravaganza to forget their own woes.

“They (poor) care most about lack of jobs, the very real possibility of missing their next meal, absence of adequate and immediate medical care and the petty graft of kotong (mulcting) cops, market collectors and small-time bureaucrats who bedevil their daily lives,” he said.

He warned the Aquino administration to immediately address the worsening economic situation and the “small concerns of small Filipinos rather than divert its time, passion and resources to an agenda of prosecution, which will not uplift and empower the greater number.”

Suarez said that in 2010, blessed by the momentum left behind in the last semester of his predecessor, Aquino was able to close his first semester in office with a 7.3 percent GDP growth for the year.

“But in 2011, his first full year in office, and with none of that earlier momentum available any longer, GDP growth was only half the previous year, at only 3.7 percent. Over the same period, growth of GNI (or GNP) was even slower, only 2.7 percent,” he said.

“The complicity of this administration in deliberately under-spending the budget it had rushed through Congress is by now well-known to all. But this administration also bears its share of responsibility even for the seemingly uncontrollable causes of slow growth,” Suarez said.

Zambales Rep. Milagros Magsaysay, on the other hand, said Aquino could have anticipated the worsening recession among the country’s major trading partners and taken immediate steps to diversify its export products and markets as well as provide other forms of support to our exporters.

She said Malacañang could have also mitigated the damage from natural and man-made calamities through better crisis planning and management, or stricter enforcement of fishing regulations and other environmental laws.

“The lack of planning, action, and results from this administration is pitiful. This lack of attention and direction is already taking its toll in the inferior performance of a growing number of government agencies,” Magsaysay said.

“This is just the latest sorry example of what our people are coming to expect from this administration: not performance, not infrastructure, not more jobs or lower prices or better services – but instead, an endless spectacle of finger-pointing and vindictiveness,” she said. –Paolo Romero (The Philippine Star)