The King’s speech

It is July in Manila, the season of monsoon rains and the time of the great grand speech.

Indeed it’s that time of the year and whether we like it or not, we’ll be glued and all ears.

Today, after all, is the fourth Monday of the month. At high noon, the sun will be out or maybe it won’t.

What’s certain is that it will be a Monday of mayhem because as all such Mondays go, there will be a madding crowd of protesters again. They will shout and scream, and raise their fists high up in the air. There will be banners and posters, and effigies to burn.

Inside the glittering session hall, the House of Duterte will stand and clap and smile, and so will his fist-bumping Senate slate.

Diplomats, tycoons, and celebrities will fill the crowd while his die hard supporters will complete the show – as grand as it could possibly be, grander than the year before, perhaps the grandest of all.

They will all come dressed to the nines with their multimillion-peso timepieces and Louboutins.

President Duterte – Rody to all, The Punisher to some, the King of Davaoeños – will trumpet the gains, crack some jokes, or maybe deliver some punches as he does all the time.

He will be applauded for sure – not once, not twice, but many times over because as I’ve said before, he is grand and almighty, the best one they know.

Grading the President

But how does one really measure a presidency? Do we count the rounds of applause in his speech?

Or do we count the profanities, the obscene remarks or the kisses on strangers’ lips?

Do we count the rape jokes, the catcalling and the insults?

Or do we count the hours we waste in traffic or when we’re stuck in our airports?

Do we put all those aside and instead measure the savings we now enjoy because our children are able to go to college for free?

Or the extra money in our pockets because we now have higher salaries as teachers and members of the military and the police?

Looking at the economy

There are many ways to look at the economy. It grew at a strong average of 6.5 percent during the first 11 quarters of the Duterte administration, but it slowed to 6.2 percent last year from 6.7 percent in 2017 and 6.9 percent in 2016.

I had a chat last week with the no nonsense Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman George Barcelon.

The economy, in a way, is doing well, he said. But he noted that there’s still a long way to go. “Growth is still not inclusive.”

I agree. Poverty remains high especially in the provinces and the income disparity is still very stark and telling.

“That is why we have to fast track things. People in authority have that obligation to really improve the country. We’ve got to create more jobs,“ Barcelon said.

Agriculture, he said, has been left behind.

Farmers, he said, are still struggling to compete because of the lack of support and because the industry has not been able to modernize.

But in all, Barcelon said the country is at least moving forward. The infrastructure projects are moving and many businesses are growing.

Outside the economy

However, if we look outside the economy, not everything is rosy.

The drug war, for instance, is a mockery of our democracy. It is violent, brutal, and just plain wrong.

It has victimized mostly the poorest of the poor. I know this, not just from the heart-wrenching photographs or stories of those who document the killings, but because I’ve been there.

For several days, I joined the graveyard shift beat – journalists who work while the rest of the country is asleep. We went all over Metro Manila, chasing the killings in dark alleys and in crowded slums. I saw the dead lying grotesquely in their own pool of blood with fresh wounds and gaping bullet holes. I heard the cries of mothers and wives and children.

How to solve the drug problem then? The government must focus on the source — the big time drug dealers and only within the bounds of our laws. It also boils down to solving the problem of poverty and joblessness in the country.

And so, while we trumpet the fact that the economy is steady, let us remember that not everything in this country is as it should be.

Poverty, inequality

At the end of the day, our income disparity remains wide at 47.9 percent in 2018, according to the World Economic Forum’s Gini or income equality index. The higher the number, the wider the income gap and we are in the leagues of African countries, with South Africa having the highest inequality rate at 57.70 percent. Surprisingly, we have overtaken Russia, the land of oligarchs, which has a Gini index of 43.90 percent.

The ultimate goal of every president should be to close this gap because the greater the equality, the stronger our society will be. Now won’t that make for a really grand speech?

Iris Gonzales’ email address is [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at eyesgonzales.com