Gaining momentum

President Aquino can afford to attempt dancing Gangnam Style with his grandnephew.

For the Aquino administration, 2012 has been a year of many notable victories. Administration officials are correct in saying that this year, their reform agenda gained momentum.

The year started with the impeachment trial of Renato Corona. Unlike the trial of Joseph Estrada, this one proceeded all the way to the conclusion. It was painful to watch Corona’s self-immolation on live TV, which left several senators with no choice but to vote for his conviction.  The trial ended with the unprecedented ouster of a chief justice, for an offense that used to be taken for granted: inaccuracies in his official statements of assets, liabilities and net worth or SALN.

Did Corona’s downfall put the fear of God into the hearts of the thousands of other public officials who routinely lie in their SALNs? That’s another story, reserved for another season when we don’t have to look on the bright side.

The outcome of the trial was a clear victory for P-Noy, who even before assuming his post made no secret of his disdain for the appointment of Corona as chief magistrate.

Corona was replaced with a junior member of the Supreme Court. SC justices are supposed to be independent of the executive. Still, with the appointment of Ma. Lourdes Sereno as chief justice, P-Noy is seen to have gained an ally in the high court for the next two decades (while making enemies of the justices who were bypassed). Sereno is still trying to win friends in the tribunal. If she succeeds, it could become one of the positive stories for 2013.

Who would have thought a chief justice could be removed? That was like trying to force the removal of the ombudsman – which P-Noy also achieved, although Merceditas Gutierrez resigned before she could undergo an impeachment trial.

For P-Noy, 2012 opened with one victory and ended with two: Congress’ passage of the sin tax reform law and the Reproductive Health bill. Considering that Congress had been kicking around those two measures for over a decade, and considering the vociferous opposition to the two bills, it’s remarkable that the measures finally hurdled the legislative mill.

Although P-Noy (belatedly) leaned on his allies to pass the RH bill, he has prudently deferred enactment of the measure until after Christmas. Who wants to be the subject of negative sermons throughout the holiday masses? It’s enough that the Catholic bishops took a drubbing in this battle.

The passage of the sin tax law, meanwhile, should help ease doubts among foreign investors about the commitment of this administration to leveling the playing field for business. Investors will need more convincing, but the enactment of the law is a significant step forward.

Health officials expect the sin tax law to force a reduction in cigarette consumption among the majority of Pinoy smokers. This doesn’t include the chain-smoking guy who signed the law, but this is also another story. 

Earlier in the year, P-Noy lost a valuable official in the death of interior secretary Jesse Robredo. But circumstances related to the accident led to the ouster of Rico Puno as interior undersecretary for peace and order – a positive development for P-Noy, as far as skeptics of daang matuwid are concerned.

It seems, however, that P-Noy hasn’t altogether jettisoned his shooting buddy, who famously said he would take a bullet for the boss. As of yesterday, Malacañang had to dispel rumors that Puno was being recycled as undersecretary for agriculture. After the resigned head of the National Food Authority, Lito Banayo, was implicated in rice smuggling, bringing Puno to the Department of Agriculture may not be a good idea.

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Corona and Puno are among the losers in 2012. But the year’s biggest loser is the Catholic Church, which has seen its influence in state policy making greatly eroded under the watch of the only son of Corazon Aquino.

Having covered the first Aquino presidency, I can write with certainty that the mother would have approved of her son’s stand on RH.

As I have previously written, the Church wields the strongest influence when the president’s hold on power is uncertain, when the mandate is unclear and the government is under constant threat of being overthrown.

P-Noy, however, has a solid mandate, winning the presidency by a landslide. In another first, he has also bucked the trend in public opinion that pollsters have registered since the presidency of Cory Aquino – a substantial drop in approval ratings midway through a president’s six-year term.

Apart from the deft utilization of the pork barrel system, the sustained high trust and performance ratings of the President surely contribute to his success in getting lawmakers to support his reform agenda. Pragmatic politicians have no appetite for fighting a popular chief executive.

The other success of the administration this year is the signing of a framework agreement for peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Again, it’s a long road to the successful implementation of a peace pact. The mess in the impoverished Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao – a product of the original peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front – attests to this. But the signing of a framework deal with the MILF, which is supposed to include decommissioning of the secessionists’ weapons, raises hope for improvements in Mindanao.

Assessing its performance in 2012, the Aquino administration recently indulged in self-congratulation, saying that momentum was attained for reforms. The assessment is correct; the challenge in achieving momentum is sustaining it.

In this season of hope we focus on the good news for 2012. As for the bad news… we dwell on that for most of the rest of the year.