Ate Glue’s SONA a week ago had been criticized for a lot of things but it seems people fail to appreciate that she was merely doing the best she could under the circumstances. Her past attempts to inspire felt flat. Remember the paper boat speech of some years back? She has learned her lesson. After six years doing the SONA jig, she knows she doesn’t have it in her to inspire anyone the way great leaders of countries are expected to.
But Ate Glue also knows what she is good at… buying the support of people with the people’s money. She didn’t become the Goddess of Pork and the Political Payback Queen for nothing. That’s how she continues to maintain the support of the House of Representatives and local government officials. She has developed the special skill even while she was still a senator. And it was her salvation in the past turbulent years of her administration.
So I was not surprised her SONA was a sonata for pork. She knows she can’t inspire those congressmen, but she knows from experience that she can appeal to the greed in their hearts. And a good ego massage will do the rest. That’s why her SONA was a litany of public works projects and the names of congressmen and local leaders who lobbied for them.
I am not implying that those projects are bad. I am only afraid the projects may not have been properly vetted and prioritized because the overwhelming consideration was political payback. If any of those projects happen to be in the national interest, that would be a fortunate coincidence.
Still, it can be argued that an airport in an otherwise backwater location may be the economic salvation of the area and thus relieve the pain of local poverty. Ate Glue may be just rewarding Gov. Ben Evardone’s extreme loyalty by giving him the funds for an airport in Guiuan, Eastern Samar but it may be just the thing that would jumpstart economic development in this NPA infested province.
Ben assured me that the place is excellent for surfing, like Siargao. I am inclined to believe him because when I was growing up, we had a driver from Borongan who told me stories about Guiuan and how American WW2 forces dumped brand new army jeeps that arrived too late there at the close of the war. I think there may even be an American airfield in Ben’s bit of Paradise that could be rehabilitated. A little basic infrastructure in the place may be just what is needed to attract survivor type tourists to drop by and inject some cash in the local economy.
I didn’t count the number of names Ate Glue mentioned in connection with the various pork projects she enumerated in her SONA but I think there must have been at least 300 names. Considering that they come from all over the country, that’s a neat way of literally cementing nationwide support.
Of course the strategy can backfire if Ate Glue runs out of money or as what happened in the case of Albay Gov. Joey Salceda’s ill-fated Pantao port facilities, the government agency tasked with delivering the project produced a substandard one. The graft ridden Philippine Ports Authority delivered a wharf whose design failed to account for the strong typhoons in the area. Over P300 million of our money was swept out to sea by the first big typhoon in Albay before the wharf was even used by a single ship. Joey’s good intentions proved not enough.
I could almost feel the crocodiles among the DPWH, PPA and other agencies and their contractors salivate as Ate Glue enumerated her infrastructure projects one by one. Happy days are here again, and swine flu or not, they will be feasting on crispy pata and lechon for the next three years. Nothing inspires this type of people more than visions of money dancing in their heads.
What else can we do but hope for the best! After all, we do lack infrastructure in this country and we do have to invest big in infrastructure if we want to sustain economic growth. Ate Glue knows she can’t leave legacies in the realm of honest and efficient elections, good governance and other such things that inspire us to be proud Filipinos.
As for education and health services, the positive impact of the increased budget we are now allocating for them won’t be obvious within the three years she has left in her term. But she can leave very visible roads, bridges, ports and in the process also buy support from political gatekeepers. In that context, her SONA did the job it was supposed to do.
We can only hope that Ate Glue does not squander a great amount of money in her desire to leave a “concrete” legacy as she buys support from the local political elite to keep her in power now and for as long as she wants to be. It is too much to expect her to inspire us in her SONA or in her governance. But if she delivers “concrete” accomplishments on time and minimizes the corruption factor, we should count ourselves blessed indeed.
Feedback
Here are excerpts from an e-mail sent by PhilStar reader Romeo Pajarillo in reaction to a previous column.
There is more to that corruption survey of the Social Weather Station than just a mere finding that so many businessmen were asked to bribe. What must be understood is the damage that corruption inflicts on the economy. The survey meant that some companies declined to bribe and did not pursue a business transaction. Worse, some other companies got the deal because they came across.
There are two other worrisome aspects. First, the survey confirmed that the corruption has been occurring mostly in infrastructures. (The highest corruption levels were experienced by businessmen transaction with infrastructure-related agencies. Well, to be fair, also mentioned were the Bureau of Customs, the Department Interior and Local Government and the Philippine National Police.)
That means that awards involving public infrastructures have bribes built into their costs. What’s the standard? If that’s 10 percent of a P10 million project, that’s P1 million less for the purchase of quality construction materials and for payment of right wages to workers. I do hope the President takes action because this year the capital spending in the national budget is more than P180 billion.
A second worry is the level of corruption in the future. The President wants to leave a mega-infrastructure legacy. This is good. But I hope she gets these projects done by honest contractors. Otherwise, taxpayers like us are going to foot the inflated bill. The money is better spent on helping the poor get jobs, buy medicines, send children to school, and owning shelter.
The survey should also ask the opinion of businessmen if tied contracts are a form of bribery or corruption? You know the kind: some countries would award grants for the construction of public works or facilities provided their nationals will have special advantage over all other suppliers.
And lastly, businessmen should also be surveyed on whether they consider as bribes their donations to the favorite charities of politicians. It would also be interesting to know whether they have strict orders to their agents not to engage in corruption in any of its forms.
The father
This is from Robin Tong.
A guy goes to the supermarket and notices an attractive woman waving at him. She says hello.
He’s rather taken aback because he can’t place where he knows her from. So he says, “Do you know me?”
To which she replies, “I think you’re the father of one of my kids.”
Now his mind travels back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife and says, “My God, are you the stripper from my bachelor party that I made love to on the pool table with all my buddies watching while your partner whipped my butt with wet celery?
She looks into his eyes and says calmly, “No, I’m your son’s teacher.”
Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com