EDITORIAL - Failed promise

Last Wednesday, almost all the national newspapers bannered the story that 28 percent, or nearly a third, of all Filipinos remained dirt-poor -- meaning they live on less than twenty-five pesos a day.

This was the bombshell that President Aquino and his administration most hated to explode just a few weeks into the election. For it meant the centerpiece promise of Aquino's governance has laid a big fat egg.

The centerpiece promise of Aquino's "daang matuwid" governance had been prosperity for all. In the heady days of the 2010 presidential campaign, Aquino's voice boomed as he asked all Filipinos to take heart, for better days lie just up ahead.

Aquino reduced everything to a simple enough proposition: Just vote him to office and the moral government he brings to power will take care of everything. There'll be food on the table, he exclaimed. Walang mahirap kung walang kurap!

The catch-phrase of the Aquino presidency -- walang mahirap kung walang kurap -- is best left untranslated into English. English sometimes has a way of taking away the reality and sting of the vernacular. Walang mahirap kung walang kurap it is.

And then last Wednesday came. And the newspaper headlines screamed that 28 out of every 100 Filipinos remained dirt poor, that they earn less than twenty-five pesos a day. And the bad news did not even come from Aquino's enemies.

The bad news was from Aquino's own government, from the National Statistical Coordination Board. And the figures were current. They reflected the state of affairs of today, halfway into Aquino's six-year term.

What that means is that after three years of chasing his enemies, all of whom he accused of being corrupt, and after three years of giving away billions of pesos in cash doleouts to the poor, the state of affairs in the country remained what they were when Aquino came in.

In fact things may as well be worse off now as it is already 2013 and Filipinos are still as poor as they were in 2010. And if the poor are still struggling, then it only follows that the corrupt must still be very much around. Maybe in chasing a few out, Aquino let so many more in.