The COVID-19 SONA

The State of the Nation Address (SONA) that President Duterte delivered last Monday before a joint session of Congress was delivered in an eerily abnormal fashion – before a selected few of well-distanced parliamentarians who only represented their larger memberships and a limited audience who were chosen, all of them wearing masks. The rest was viewed by the nation on TV and on computers.

A scripted drama. The SONA is essentially a rendering of the President’s view of how the nation is progressing under his leadership. It is delivered annually before the parliament opens for the year.

It is a scripted drama about how the President seeks the support of the legislature in the crafting of laws essential to his successful running of government.

Another aspect of this institutional drama is that, often, it provides a major signaling device to foreign governments and foreign investors on what the government intends to do in the coming period.

In the end, the President uses the occasion to present a list of tasks for Congress to pass laws that are essential to national growth and survival. In this sense, the President delineates his program of government and asserts his leadership to advance the nation’s aspirations.

President Duterte’s previous SONAs. President Duterte’s SONAs have not been models of soaring eloquence from the start of his administration. They are more practical, somewhat interrupted by ad libs, and sometimes wild digressions.

Despite this rambling approach, his accomplishments in terms of outcomes have been quite productive. This compares very well with those of recent presidents who had difficulty in swaying Congress to his/ her programs. For instance, the passage of the budget of the government has been accomplished with relative ease compared to that which bothered many of his predecessors. The budget is the most important housekeeping legislation of the government during the year.

On controversial political issues, he often got what he wanted from Congress. The most controversial and difficult in recent years was the declaration of martial law in the island of Mindanao. This was accomplished along with the passage of the BangsaMoro law, another difficult legislation.

On the economic front, he got big and important infrastructure projects started and speeded up. Compared to the accomplishments of previous administrations, he has initiated and could look forward to major infrastructure projects being completed. His record as he reaches the close of his term will be far better than his immediate predecessors.

The relative speed with which he secured passage of the first of the major tax reforms – the TRAIN Law –laid the basis for raising the government’s revenue performance. This enabled larger social transfers to help the poor and more economically disadvantaged and to finance important government salary increases without busting fiscal discipline. Further, this law strengthened budgeting for the public investment program.

5th SONA and COVID-19 challenges. This year’s SONA is not much different from the first four SONAs in style and content. But in a time of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the economy badly set back and needing to recover, we need a stronger sense of where the true priorities are likely to be.

The different departments of government have many legislative proposals which could instead take up the time of Congress to deliberate on other truly more important measures. In this SONA, such measures take as much importance as any other once mentioned.

As delivered, the SONA this year has been rendered more political in tone than previous SONAs. The recent congressional committee’s decision not to renew the franchise renewal application of ABS-CBN and the recent passage of the National security law have intensified the politicization of the issues.

Further, the pandemic lockdown has caused short tempers among so many people whose livelihoods have been disrupted.

The 5th SONA of President Duterte, as delivered and written, disappoints because it is so similar to the first four SONAs when the situation called for something more emphatic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created so much joblessness and many poor. Problems of longer term unemployment are likely to persist if not countered with a well-articulated program of recovery.

Indeed, such is the moment to elaborate on this. It is a clarion call for bolder programs to articulate national unity on a grand objective – recovery and national survival.

At the very least, this requires a major effort at explanation and more nerve. We cannot have an examination of the future where problems are perceived as all equally important by the government.

The SONA could have been a more forceful vehicle for articulating the need to pursue the recovery effort, to spell out how central is the passage of the CREATE tax and investment reform in attracting and mobilizing the nation for more private investments. The main task of the economic recovery is to put in place new market strategies to encourage new investments. This requires strengthening the country’s competitive position.

We must find the means to participate in active measures to get a share of FDIs moving from China to other countries in view of the structural changes happening in the regional economy. We have to prepare to support displaced OFWs returning home integrate more fully, more permanently, and more productively. We have to develop a proper response to the threat of artificial intelligence and robotics which are displacing labor in a field where a lot of our workers are currently employed.

In these, our push to continue to have public infrastructure programs under Build Build Build will help a lot. Could a further emphasis in supporting programs of low-cost, sustainable housing programs assure more growth stimulus to the economy? In doing so, the nation’s needs for highly globally competitive industrial growth is still much needed to strengthen the balance of payments.

Eventually, some of the international finance of our immediate recovery requires some support from the growth of our export and other dollar-earning industries. In a time of continued global uncertainty, such efforts require a major re-design of the way we do business as a nation. We need part of the dynamism that we can derive from foreign direct investments to help finance that growth and recovery.

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