‘Noynoy never promised the people a rose garden. What he promised was clean and honest leadership.’
THE president and vice-president elected by the people last May 10, 2010 have been officially proclaimed by Congress in joint session assembled. Before noon of June 30, Jejomar Binay will be sworn in as vice president, and at the exact hour of noon, Benigno S. Aquino III, child of destiny, will be sworn in as the15th president of the Philippines.
In his week-long hiatus prior to the official proclamation, PBSA must have been pondering over the enormity of the job that lies ahead.
While Congress has discharged its constitutional duty with proper dispatch, given the masterful handling of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, the incumbent chief executive whose term will expire twenty days hereafter has, contrary to good sense and good conduct, strewn the path of graceful transition by a plethora of midnight deals and a cacophony of midnight appointees. Just unravelling these obstacles, these potential minefields, will consume the time of the new president’s lawyers, meanwhile holding hostage the momentum of change he promised.
Which is exactly what the evil want. She and they hope that with high expectations from a people who desperately want to see the beginnings of reform, the new leadership will falter. That is why she is splurging millions upon millions to advertise her shop-worn wares. Infrastructure, she touts in television commercials, without counting the "tongpats." She wants to be remembered for the new roads and bridges, for the instant convenience, in the hope that in time, people will forget how they were bled dry by the overpricing, how for years and years public services and basic necessities will be denied them because government will have to pay the bills that she incurred.
Gloria banks on the Filipino’s legendarily short memories. Her paid hacks in media now even have the gall to compare her to Marcos, saying that while Marcos left in a blaze of shame, now many are singing paeans to the "efficiency" of that chapter in our lives called martial law. Proof in fact of this cultural aberration of forgetting too soon is the ease with which Bongbong the son was elected senator of the realm last May 10.
Indeed, in his sponsorship speech before Congress, outgoing majority floor leader Arthur Defensor, who by June 30 will reclaim his post as governor of genteel Iloilo, somehow echoed the burdens upon the new president-elect, when he quoted the great American poet, Robert Frost: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep".
Defensor of course was careful to include every government official and not just the president-elect, reminding the collective government leadership of promises made and promises that must be kept. Well, Noynoy never promised the people a rose garden. What he promised is clean and honest leadership, the wellspring of good governance, which in turn is the key to alleviating poverty. Surely those who elected him last May 10 do not expect instant salvation. And now that they realize how many monkey wrenches the evil have thrown at Noynoy’s new government, their revulsion at the old order multiplies a hundred fold.
Noynoy can call upon the goodwill of honestly-gained overwhelming mandate to put the dragons of Gloria’s greed at bay. So it is best for those midnight appointees to submit their resignations gracefully, in keeping with tradition as well as good sense. If Noynoy is forced to drag them out of their offices, especially those who have abused the laws of the land or public trust, the public will applaud. Employees of their agencies might in fact be the first to drag them bodily out of their sinecures.
So perish your dreams of public redemption, Doña Gloria. Neither the present nor the future will give you the fond memories you seek. Only the opprobrium will remain, especially with this series of naked exercise of prerogative done with stealth "like a thief in the night".
But then again, the new president cannot rule by merely reminding the people about the amoral reign and bad governance of Gloria. There is grinding poverty that needs to be addressed. There is a faltering economy saddled with huge debts and fiscal deficits that needs to be remedied. And there is a woeful state in the delivery of the most basic of services, especially to the poor, that must be delivered.
It therefore behooves the men and women of the new regime to think on two parallel tracks – the medium and long-term programs, as well as the immediate relief programs. The medium consists of what are doable within the six-year term; the long-term in terms of laying the founding predicates for continuity of policy and program implementation beyond those six years.
Immediate relief comes in the form of poverty-alleviation measures that are affordable and relatively easy to implement, and in confidence-building measures that will assure the local and international community that at long last, this is a no-nonsense government dedicated to transparency, accountability and the exercise of requisite political will.
As John F. Kennedy, who himself loved to quote Robert Frost, kept saying when he would expound on his domestic and foreign policy initiatives, when he blazed his "new frontiers", "time is no longer a friend".
President-elect Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III knows this only well.
LITO BANAYO
MALAYA Column for Friday, 11 June 2010
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