Another stone for the edifice

There are those who are against criticizing the newly elected Aquino government. After all it has not begun governing yet. Give him the 100-day grace period. It is a reasonable request.

Those who did not vote for him did not think he was qualified for the most difficult and toughest job in the country. But there he is — the president of the country – despite nine years of lackadaisical congressional record and a generally ungifted politician lacking experience and intellectual prowess. His virtue lay principally in being the son of the martyred hero Benigno Aquino and former President Cory Aquino.

You can argue against that kind of reasoning and wish that we could have elected a more qualified candidate. We owe it to ourselves as a nation. I believe that we would have moved forward in our journey to more mature democracy had we been given a chance. But the deed is done. Unfortunately, other factors and vested interests conspired against this intelligent approach to electing our leaders. It shows yet again why we need to restructure our polity through Charter change. A shift from presidential to parliamentary government would have given us a better chance to elect leaders based on experience, capability and their vision for the country.

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Paradoxically, if we are to criticize the new government constructively, our point of departure should be the last administration. It is my opinion that more can be done for the country if we were to look not just at the failures but also the successes of the Arroyo government. She had succeeded in many areas of governance that can and should be continued by the Aquino government. These successes have been published in two books, a coffee table version and a smaller sized one. The books’ authors are Dr. Renato S. Velasco and Ricardo L. Saludo both of whom had worked closely with her.

I am partial to the subtitle of the book “Another Stone for the Edifice” rather than the more combative main title “Beating the Odds”. The former President did beat the odds because of her strong headedness. She may be a woman but she brought into governance a steely character that puts to shame past presidents of the other sex. 

That steely character served her well to resist attempts to oust her before her term ends. Among those odds were how to cope with terror, achieving peace in armed conflicts, tackling a serious drug problem, and handling SARS, an epidemic that especially threatened our overseas workers. There was, of course, the violent Oakwood coup attempt. A more peaceful but no less intractable feat was how to manage the budget.

The present government can and should continue areas of Ms. Arroyo’s government to establish continuity and stability for the country. We may not have parliamentary government but we can behave like we had one through program-based government. Nation building will be helped a lot if we had that perspective to move forward from point Arroyo to point Aquino instead of shallow adversarial politicking much loved by those who do not care what happens to our country.

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I have excerpted my favorite portions of the books.

“Many critics blamed the Arroyo government for contracting a huge amount of debt during her presidency. The real mind-boggler was that under her watch, the government borrowed a total of P4.6 trillion, which was over thrice the amount borrowed by the Aquino, Ramos and Estrada administrations combined.

What the public failed to understand was that the debt was used by the government to finance basic social services such as education for more children, mass housing for the poor, an expanded healthcare system, improvement in the salaries of government workers and new and modernized infrastructure. Credit goes to the Arroyo administration for delivering tangible results. It was during her term that the country experienced the longest stretch of economic growth. (Source: Edsel L. Beja Jr.: The Philippines on Debt Road). Real GDP growth hit a high of 7.1% in 2007, before it plunged in 2008 because of the global crisis. Even so the Philippines never went into recession as some of our neighboring countries did,” writes Saludo.

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The books also acknowledge the partnership between the Executive and the Legislative even if sometimes we read only about their squabbles.

In the chapter “Building on a decade of gains” Saludo writes on an agenda close to my heart.

“A final agenda for Executive and Legislative consideration is constitutional reform. Even at the height of anti-Charter change sentiment, three out of five Filipinos were favorable or open to amending the fundamental law. While always controversial Charter change must be given proper deliberation whether it should be done and how. What should help advance consensus now is greater confidence in the electoral process which would help ensure that any vote on the Constitution shall reflect the true sentiment of the people.”

Before the books are lampooned yet again in media, responsible writers should check the facts and figures contained in the two books. Like voting intelligently we should also form opinions intelligently. This is not to say, that she has solved all the problems of the country or that she cannot be criticized.

As for me, I liked her grit when targeted for ouster by the usual combination of oligarchs and a former colonizer in our history. She was demonized so relentlessly that lesser individuals would have succumbed at the pressure to bring her down before her term ends.

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I am glad that I am writing this column when she is out of power. A group calling themselves “people power” distributed a letter in the gala showing of Cats asking me, among others, to resign as chairman and trustee of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. I think it would help if critics read once in a while before they leap and make unreasonable demands. I cannot resign from the posts because I had already resigned while Gloria Arroyo was still president.

I supported GMA to the hilt because to me she is a symbol of our continuing quest for self-determination. None of the authors touched on the matter but as far as I am concerned making it to the finish line was the remarkable feat. President Noynoy should show the same grit by making decisions for the Philippines that would strengthen, not weaken our capacity as a sovereign nation.