26 years of living in the era of trapos!

I was at the Panglao Resort, Panglao, Bohol last Tuesday evening watching late night TV when I saw my good friend Erik Espina’s “Republika” Talkshow on GNN. His guests were Prof. Leonor Briones, chair of Kaakbay, and Erick San Juan, publisher of Opinyon. The topic was the hot issue of the week… about that stupidity where the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) pledged to loan $1 billion to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an issue that incensed many ordinary Filipinos.

When the Philippines was literally under the gun by the IMF… it demanded from the Philippine government belt tightening programs from the time of Presidents Marcos, Cory Aquino, Fidel V. Ramos, Erap Estrada to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. That’s nearly three decades that the Filipino people were told that there would not be enough funds to fix our schools, no funds for road infrastructure and all those other basic stuff.

But our belt tightening measures have started to pay off… and since there was not much work here at home, the number of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) grew by leaps and bounds... and last year their annual dollar remittances reached a record high of $19 billion. So after more than 20 years of sacrificing… it was time for the Filipinos to breathe a little. But apparently in an act of pure braggadocio, the BSP made that $1 billion pledge to the IMF… and the Aquino regime applauded with gusto!

What Prof. Briones revealed on Erik’s show was that the BSP still had billions of dollars in debt in the World Bank and $50 billion to capitalize the BSP. All I can say is… WOW! How dare this present dispensation lend $1 billion to the IMF when we are still wallowing in other debts? President Aquino could still have saved his face if he stopped the BSP and gave more priority to the needs of Filipinos rather than the needs of the IMF… particularly Spain and Greece, which haven’t done any belt tightening measures since World War II.

Apparently, after two years in office… the Aquino government is still very much the same student government that we saw took the reins of power in Malacañang in 2010. When asked about the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, Prof. Briones merely shrugged her shoulders in obvious disgust… because it is teaching our poor not to work for money or food, but to be mendicants or beggars. Shame!

But then, I don’t blame P-Noy and his DSWD Sec. Dinky Soliman for doing this… after all, in the last 26 years we have lived in the era of traditional politicians (trapos), and making people poor is what trapos do best. Ask yourself… who were the political names that were famous back in the 1960s and have returned since EDSA? We’ve always had the Aquinos, Cojuangcos, Osmeñas, Roxases running our nation all in the name of helping the poor. But no matter what… the poor still wallows in poverty. It’s surprising why until now, the poor have not revolted against our dirty political mafia that continues to prey on their poverty.

Mr. Jean Michaut, a loyal reader of mine emailed his thoughts about the government’s giving money to the poor: “If you pay people to stay poor, then more people will stay poor. People respond to incentives… that’s why welfare creates poverty as it literally pays people not to make it to middle class. We should focus on growing or increasing the middle class and not just making poverty comfortable.” Indeed this is food for thought. Giving money to the poor eases their hunger pains just for a short while until the money runs out. We should instead come up with job creation programs that give dignity to our poor people… instead of making them beggars.

No wonder P-Noy’s popularity has slid down precariously. Sure, his loyal media dogs would justify this as a “normal” thing that happened to all previous presidents. But we know that compared to the other presidents, P-Noy has a well-oiled propaganda (I still recall how my friend former Sen. Kit Tatad exposed an Aquino relative as a Director of both SWS and Pulse Asia) machinery that props up his image, even to the point of lying to the people about his high popularity rating.

What P-Noy’s propaganda machinery cannot control are social networking sites. I just read a tweet from a Servant blessing that says, “Just surveyed my 70 DAP grad students on @Pnoy’s performance using MGG criteria. He got 4.4, below the 10 highest rating; 7.5 is passing.” This is one reality that we can see… that P-Noy’s popularity has gone down drastically.

Talking about “normal” things that happened to previous Presidents — all presidents since Marcos got clobbered in the mid-term elections because of their failing popularity. It is for this reason why P-Noy urged Comelec Commissioner Sixto Brillantes to get those “hocus-pocus” PCOS machines so they’ll tweak it to favor only the LP candidates.

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