Thursday, July 31, 2008 Wenceslao: Gray areas By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
FUNNY how assessment of the state of a nation can be as contrasting. Even as President Arroyo's State of the Nation Address (Sona) endeavored to portray the situation we are in as like a half-full glass of water, her critics are insisting it is half empty. One paints a glowing picture of our situation, the other is seeing only gloom. Classic black and white lines.
There was a time in history when the black vs. white template sounded believable. Superman was all good and Lex Luthor all bad. Times have changed. Writers are reinterpreting superheroes and their milieu, presenting the gray areas. Weaknesses of the once all-good hero are exposed and the good in the bad guy shown. Assessments are getting real.
Was the con-tent of the President's Sona all wrong and her critics' arguments of it all correct? I doubt. That is why my admonition to the public is to be wary of the claims of both sides and view the situation as objectively as possible. Spin doctors and propagandists exist in both banks of the divide, seeking to sway public opinion for their political ends.
The dynamic between the external and internal factors, for example, should be viewed objectively. President Arroyo correctly noted that the global woes, specifically in oil prices and rice production, did wipe out some of the country's economic gains. Questionable, however, was the downplaying of the contribution of her policies to the difficulties we are in.
But it would be wrong to pin all the responsibility for the country's downturn to the Arroyo administration and not recognizing the global crunch as a factor. A bamboo curtain is not in place around us and we are part of the shrinking global village. We are at the mercy of the world's monopoly capitalists and their every move creates ripples on our shores.
I agree, however, that the country's poor would have been better prepared to face the global economic crisis had we been under a better government administrator. This is not to say that the Arroyo administration's policies are totally out of whack.
But it has ended up like its predecessors, benefiting only the corrupt and favoring a chunk of the ruling elite.
Still, one should given it to the Arroyo government for preventing the country's total collapse in the midst of the rocketing prices of petroleum products and the global rice production woes. Imagine if these things happened before the Erap administration was ousted. I mean, Arroyo's Sona 2008 did have some shades of gray.
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ my blog: cebuano.wordpress.com)
