Reinvention

The President, according to his press office, carved out time to work on next Monday’s State of the Nation Address (SONA). That will be hard work.

The SONA is always the record of a leader’s achievements as well as vision, the speech of reference.

I had the privilege of working on the SONA teams of former presidents Fidel Ramos and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. My involvement began with Ramos’ second SONA and was some sort of punishment for criticizing, in his face, his maiden SONA as resembling a cut-and-paste military-style memo.

Both Ramos and Arroyo were legendary taskmasters. For both, the SONA team began working on the speech in April. Despite the early start, we were always cramming.

Much of the work involves condensing all the inputs from the various government departments and select only those that adhere to the central theme. Otherwise the SONA would last many hours.

While the speech is a condensation of many things, the prose must be allowed to breathe. The speech must be breathtaking but not breathless. Enough applause lines must be built in so that the speech not only clarifies but also uplifts. Nearly every other sentence must be a high point. The soundbites must never appear contrived.

The SONA remains a draft until it is delivered. Presidents continue to work and rework the speech even as they are transported to the House of Representatives for the big event. The few copies printed out before the actual address are carefully marked “Check against Delivery.”

Quite often, presidents make impromptu statements as they deliver the momentous address. That is every speechwriter’s nightmare.

Of all our recent presidents, Rodrigo Duterte was most notorious for meandering away from the script. There was one instance where he strayed so far from the prepared text, his SONA extended to nearly double the time it normally takes.

I was in Davao City in the last week of June 2016 for the “Sulong Pilipinas,” a broad-based gathering of groups supporting Duterte’s reform agenda. Less than an hour before the president-elect was due to speak, I was asked to draft a speech for the occasion. I never worked to furiously on any piece of text in my life.

In the end, Duterte dispensed with the prepared draft and went on to speak spontaneously. I told his assistants I will never write a speech for him ever again. And I never did.

The SONA is a constitutional dictate. It is the Chief Executive’s annual report to the nation. It both summarizes the gains made and marks the road forward.

While the address is an opportunity for the Chief Executive to crow about the great things he has achieved, he should not dwell on the past. The address is equally about vision-setting, rallying his people to support all the forthcoming initiatives.

The SONA is, at the same time, a speech before the legislators. It must outline a compelling policy agenda that will inspire the public’s hopefulness and indicate the priorities of legislation. No other speech during the year has so many layers and so many disparate audiences all at once.

The President’s address on Monday will be his third. That will mark the midpoint of his stewardship. It comes at a time when the Marcos II administration needs to reinvent itself dramatically as a means to renew its legitimacy.

President BBM swept to power on the back of a historic electoral landslide. The majority of our voters were clearly hoping he, among all the contestants, would deliver the same dramatic results his father accomplished during his time.

His first two years in office, however, appear to fall short of the grandest expectation. We have seen little of the major reforms we expect. Looking back, we see a plateau without high points.

This might be the reason why the most recent opinion polling indicated a fall in the President’s approval and trust ratings. Next Monday’s SONA must shore up his base and rebuild public support.

President BBM has some major accomplishments. He has completely remolded our foreign relations to better serve our national security needs. In just two years, PBBM has emerged as an important voice in global affairs.

But much needs to be done about the bread-and-butter issues that are more compelling for the man on the street. Inflation – particularly food inflation – takes a daily toll and raises the misery index.

The average Filipino voter unrealistically expects government to control prices and improve wages. That sort of magic exists only in the demagoguery of rabble-rousers.

Recently, minimum wages were increased by a truly marginal amount. Yet that will cause the loss of about 140,000 jobs. We cannot go this path.

There is no silver bullet that cures inflation. Government must do ten thousand undramatic things to make our domestic economy more efficient and build up our productivity.

Corruption takes its continuing toll on our nation’s ability to lift itself up. The “take” in public projects constitutes about half of the budget allotted for them. With this leakage, we will never have the infra we need to continue growing the economy.

Government accounts for only about 14 percent of our GDP. It will never have enough to accomplish the breakthroughs we need to surge. The private sector continues to be the driving force for our growth. Reforms must center on helping the private sector.