The SONA needed by the people

Tomorrow’s State of the National Address (SONA) by President BBM may yet mark the turning point in his presidency. It may yet be a chance for him to begin to regain the trust of the Filipino people. It provides an opportunity to report the accomplishments of the administration, present the country’s current situation and outline the government’s plans for the coming years.

President BBM should take this opportunity to remind the Filipino people that he was actually the person who started the investigation on the flood control scandals during his SONA last year.

It may be ironic that people not only have forgotten that he was the one who opened the investigation on the flood control’s corruption, but he is actually being blamed for these scandals. He needs therefore to convince the Filipino people that he is serious about putting the major figures in the scandal behind bars. Although there have been some prominent figures already in jail like former senator Bong Revilla, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, Sen. Rodante Marcoleta and Mike Defensor, the people are still waiting for the so-called “big fish” of the flood control scandal to be put in jail.

This topic of corruption and how he intends to wage this war must be the start of his SONA tomorrow.

I feel, however, that the most important part of his speech must be a plan to reduce poverty and increase employment. The worst thing that he can do is to make the Philippines’ promotion to being an upper-middle income country as the central theme of his speech. Economic growth is meaningless if it does not lead to a reduction of poverty and an increase of employment opportunities for the ordinary Filipino.

The government should have a realistic but ambitious plan to encourage investments in manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, renewal energy and information technology. Aside from a plan, the government has yet to unveil any plan on how it will source these investments. Today, foreign investments are still not coming in to the country.

The Filipino upper class is still investing their money abroad by buying real estate in foreign countries and other similar investments, rather than investing domestically. The President needs to have a drastic plan for all these, like imposing wealth tax on investments by Filipinos in foreign countries.

At the same time, the government must have a concrete plan on how to strengthen labor protection to ensure that workers receive a living wage and other adequate benefits.

This government has also only paid lip service to prioritizing agriculture. However, millions of Filipinos continue to depend on farming and fishing for their livelihood. Many farmers continue to face the same challenges such as outdated farming methods, limited access to irrigation, expensive farm inputs and low market prices.

The President should announce specific and credible programs to improve and expand irrigation systems, affordable credit to farmers, crop insurance and better farm-to-market roads.

Every year, this and past governments cite that these are priorities but have never provided any specific budgets and programs for agriculture and fishery.

President BBM should also address the eternal problem of education in the country. Each year, we have the same problem of lack of classrooms, lack of teachers, lack of books and teaching materials. Instead, each year, we have legislators ignorant in education proposing changes in the curriculum and even the number of years of basic schooling. These are topics best left to education experts.

The government has also not outlined a program to encourage the private sector to invest in public school education. Without government incentives, the private sector will invest in education if they can make a profit from it. However, meaningful and quality education cannot be a profit venture alone.

Another priority topic that should be discussed is health care. Poor health has often pushed families deeper into poverty because of expensive medical costs and lost income. There is a crying need to strengthen public hospitals, increase access to primary health care services, expand vaccination and nutrition programs and improve the efficiency and implementation of PhilHealth and other government health care programs. There is a critical need for rural communities to receive additional support towards more health centers, medical professionals and telemedicine services. Perhaps the government can explore programs like requiring new graduates of medicine to spend one or two years of residency in rural health centers.

A fifth topic is social protection. The government should ensure that financial assistance programs reach those who need them most. Conditional cash transfers, food assistance, livelihood grants and disaster relief should be delivered with efficiency and transparency. Strengthening digital payment systems and improving beneficiary data bases can reduce delays, duplication and fraud.

Finally, the President should have a specific program for infrastructure development because this is what stimulates economic activity and creates jobs. Investments in roads, bridges, railways, airports, seaports, water systems, irrigation systems and digital infrastructure can bring development to rural communities, improve public services and attract businesses.

The critical challenge of course is to ensure that this infrastructure is done without any corruption and with utmost transparency.

Above all of these, the President needs to discuss the importance of good governance and fighting corruption. All these may sound overly ambitious but these are what our people desperately need.