Alarming

The most recent SWS survey showed President Aquino II’s approval ratings drop substantially. More than that, he is the only public official whose ratings are dipping.

In typical fashion, Aquino II blames the media for highlighting the bad news and overlooking the good. In response, according to the grapevine, the Palace hired a pricey public relations group to do the propaganda that the three-headed “communications group” failed to do.

But if it is only the President’s ratings that are deteriorating while even those of his Cabinet members are improving, bad press could not be the explanation. The resort to propaganda takes off on the wrong premise.

The Palace make-up artists ought to decompose the survey more carefully. The cascading loss of confidence in Aquino II is most significant among the higher income brackets — the better-informed sections of the community unlikely to be swayed by contriving the news. The more literate sections of society tend to form their opinions independently and their political inclinations define the trend for the rest of the community. They are unlikely to accept platitudes in place of explanation.

Political narcissism, of course, drives the Palace make-up artists to concentrate on finding a “cure” to the unflattering SWS numbers. Patriotism, however, should encourage them to focus on the other recent survey: the one done by the prestigious Political and Economic Risk Consultants (PERC) covering investor attitudes across all of Southeast Asia.

The PERC numbers are truly alarming. The Philippines ranks at the bottom of the list as the country in this region where investors would want to put their money in. We are outranked by heretofore backwater economies such as Burma, Laos and Cambodia.

There is a slow rot happening if investments would rather go to Burma than to the Philippines. That slow rot could never be cured by a public relations program. Business executives are the most analytical of the lot.

This slow rot threatens the country’s future. If increasingly scarce investment flows to the region prefer to go elsewhere, that implies a serious unemployment crisis creeping up on the horizon. That implies a chronic low-growth scenario that can only widen the base of poverty in our society that no fuel-subsidy gimmick or cash-transfer program can relieve.

The cause of this slow rot that today turns investors away is no mystery. Our economy is losing competitiveness at a disturbing rate. The results of the World Competitiveness Report and the global Economic Freedom Index inform us of this slow rot year after year.

All the uprisings in the Middle East are rooted in the same problem now staring us in the face. A better-educated, better-networked successor generation finds itself unemployed and without a future as archaic forms of leadership maintain a stranglehold on their societies, conserving the oligarchy and constricting opportunity.

Both the falling approval ratings and the declining investor confidence are addressed by only one thing: the President must work harder and with a more comprehensive vision of national salvation. The essential responsibility of presidential leadership is to secure the future of a country.

On this essential responsibility, there are increasing hints of failure.

Reassuring

Much has been said about how Vice-President Jojo Binay’s trust and approval ratings dramatically improved while President Aquino II’s ratings worsened. Not enough has been said about the solid ratings of the Senate President and the Speaker of the House, two posts that have always been perceived by our public in a somewhat lesser light.

In the SWS’s March survey, for instance, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s net satisfaction rating jumped up nine percent. Nearly two-thirds of respondents in Pulse Asia’s version of the survey approved of Enrile’s performance as leader of the Senate.

If present trends hold, Enrile might achieve superior satisfaction and approval ratings than President Aquino II the next time around. It is not unusual for the Vice-President to sometimes enjoy better approval ratings than the President. But it will certainly be rare for the leader of often fractious Senate to outpoll the President of the Republic. This is a spectacle we may anticipate given the run of things — and considering Enrile will preside over the highly visible impeachment trial.

There are certainly distinct considerations at play when our people rate the performance of the most senior officials in the executive branch and the leaders of the legislative branch. In our evolution as a representative democracy, the Senate has traditionally been valued as the bulwark of independent thought and as the regularly operating check on the powers of the presidency.

I can understand why the majority might be reassured that it is Enrile at the helm of the Senate — notwithstanding the occasional excesses of this chamber. More than anyone else in that chamber, he brings to his post a certain political gravitas. He is among the last of a colorful generation of senior statesmen gracing our politics: men and women of extraordinary intellect and political toughness. Over the decades, he has served in the most senior posts in both the executive and legislative branches.

There are those who are apprehensive that the Aquino administration might be out to neutralize the operation of checks and balances in government. Using the vise of the pork barrel, the President has locked in the House of Representatives. He came after the Ombudsman with hammer and tongs, cutting corners even to fire a deputy ombudsman on mere hearsay. He has been perceived as bullying the independent media and one of his henchmen threatened to impeach justice of the High Court.

If that is indeed a pattern, it is reassuring to see Enrile leading an independent Senate.