No second wind here: SONA 2011

From Ancient Greece all the way to the Renaissance in Europe, rhetorical skill was highly regarded as an art form. You couldn’t simply string a few swanky words together and expect to be lauded for your wordy prowess — the ancient Greeks would have forced-fed you hemlock, la Socrates. Indeed, according to Aristotle, in order to effectively wield rhetoric one had to maintain sound logic, emotional appeal to audience, and the force of one’s own character all throughout.

Not an easy thing to achieve, especially with other factors such as delivery, arrangement, and topic choice to consider.

Which is why it’s a shame, really, the way we’ve come to view the method as something inherently malicious. Nowadays, it’s easy to dismiss rhetoric as an empty, bloated language used by politicians, traveling salesmen, and all manner of blood-sucking entities alike. So if it sounds good, looks good, and feels good, then it’s probably the persuasive (some might say manipulative) powers of rhetoric at work. Thus, you can almost say rhetoric makes the world go round… until it doesn’t. 

Case in point, P-Noy’s second State of the Nation Address (SONA) last July 25.

One for the road: UP ASTERISK (UP-Asosasyon ng Kabataang Artista, Kritiko, at Iskolar ng Sining at Kultura) with the finished road painting. Photo by Pauline Balba

You have to give the man credit for the conversational approach, timely pauses, subtle jokes, and practiced modulation with which he delivered his speech. My guess was that he was gunning for the squeaky-clean, disarmingly charming, I-am-a-leader-of-the-people effect. It almost covered up the fact that if you listened close enough, you’d realize just how much P-Noy’s speech was lacking in an acknowledgement of the more sensitive issues plaguing his administration.

Now don’t get me wrong — P-Noy did present the nation with a steady (read: safe) account of his administration’s accomplishments (peppered with just enough statistically-laden examples to make him credible); but he failed to push some aspects further.

For instance, P-Noy was already on the topic of agriculture and that vaguely encouraging bit about our 15.6 percent increase in rice production and plans of rice self-sufficiency… but what happened to any mention of land reform and Hacienda Luisita? The dictates of good rhetoric would have eventually led him there; and yet, nada.

It was quite disheartening, especially after seeing the outpour of farmers — among them Hacienda Lusista workers — who went to last Monday’s rally. If P-Noy really meant all that talk about the people being his “Boss” (although, come on, who is he kidding?) and about investing in the poorest of the poor (because, according to him, people are our greatest resource), then how could he have completely bypassed the issue of our farmers, who are as marginalized as they get? Maybe P-Noy has forgotten the bloody events of Nov. 16, 2004; maybe he’s consigned the reality of feudal exploitation and land-grabbing to the dustbin. If so, then he’s really something; calling the people “Boss” when it’s with the landed elite where his true interests lie. Apparently, P-Noy isn’t taking the campaign against corruption as personally as he likes to think.

And don’t say it isn’t so — he should have had the balls to address the issue otherwise.

In a similar vein, P-Noy hardly touched on the woes of the education sector — arguably the major concern of the country’s youth today. Sure, the proposed 2012 budget allocates a higher amount (P238.8 billion from this year’s P207.3 billion) to the DepEd for next year; but the damage has already been done, notably to the budget of our state universities and colleges (SUCs).

What the government doesn’t seem to appreciate is that the SUCs are there to help level the playing field (though it’s a tall order in our society, I know), serving as a tool for poorer students to gain social mobility. It’s supposed to widen the pool of our country’s would-be professionals, so that even sons of farmers can work their way to becoming doctors or lawyers. Truly, I’d like to think the state founded SUCs in the first place precisely for the propagation of democracy and learning.

As such, owing to the nature of what state universities and colleges imply, it’s only right that SUCs be supported by the government. Thus, the argument that it’s high time SUCs became self-sufficient and raised their own funds (which translates to commercialization and increased tuition fees) can only be viewed as counter-productive. Especially when one considers the money being given for military operations and pork-barrel allocations. Our budget secretary should bite his tongue.

P-Noy has to put his game face on... 

Now if only P-Noy ventured to mention this in his SONA.

Tube To Tube

I must note that I caught P-Noy’s speech only after it was recorded and posted on YouTube several hours later. You have to love modern technology. Besides, why sit around watching the SONA live (and endure minutes of polite applause) when you can rewind and fast-forward on blessed YouTube? There are more enjoyable things to do with one’s time — such as joining the rally and participating in some road painting, for instance.

I don’t have a painterly bone in my body, but it felt wonderful to engage in something as different (at least for me) as graffiti-making, a different form of symbolic violence altogether. We were depicting what we felt was the true state of the nation, something that couldn’t as effectively be relayed by a noise barrage or a march along Commonwealth alone.

To be sure, even if we cover the length of every major road in the Metro, the MMDA would just as quickly tear it down. What’s important, however, is that we never stop trying. On the relatively brighter side of things, there’s still five more years to go. And while I’m not going to be holding my breath waiting for systemic changes to take place in this lifetime, well, there’s always hope.