Monday, July 26, 2004 Peñaflorida: No ifs and buts By Atty. Jobert Peñaflorida
Today, the elite membership of our country's political kingdom shall all troop to the Batasan to hear the President's State of the Nation Address or Sona.
The yearly Sona becomes the event. It signifies the start of another political season insofar as Congress is concerned (as if politics and politicking ever stop in the Philippines). It is the biggest political masquerade ball where members of both houses, as well as the top brass of the executive branch and even the judiciary, don their best suits and gowns.
But what really is Sona? More than a critique of whose attire was more expensive and impressive, it has also become a "numbers" game of counting how many times the president was applauded, or whether the clapping was genuinely loud or a simple token. Or, how long or short the President's speech was. Or, how many of the senators and the congressmen rose from their feet to give the President a standing ovation.
The post-Sona scenario is even noisier, with political pundits and analysts feasting over the President's speech - dissecting it to the last sentence and analyzing whether it was dramatic enough or too bland or whether it was able to cover all the important national agenda. It ends up as a "ratings" game - with politicians and media men rating the speech as either good or bad or in between. Of course, the President's allies would expectedly hail it to high heavens as the greatest speech they've ever heard, while the opposition would naturally give it the thumbs down as boring and lousy.
Indeed, all these hype and hoopla over the Sona have clouded the real essence of the State of the Nation Address. We have trivialized and even commercialized the Sona that its real meaning is lost to many of our people, who failed to understand and to appreciate its value.
I understand that the President has been spending long nights perfecting her Sona. As a follow through to the 10-point agenda in her inaugural speech, the President is expected to ask Congress to support five categories of legislative proposals: job creation and economic growth, anti-corruption and good governance, social justice and basic needs, education improvement and youth opportunity, and energy independence. Her Sona, which is estimated to last for forty minutes, will try to compact all her proposed solutions to and positions on many diverse and complicated problems and issues confronting our country today.
But Sona should go beyond the usual rhetoric and the itemization of all the cold and hard facts and figures, and the flaunting by the President of her accomplishments and achievements.
At this time when the country is so deeply divided, Sona should be our President's golden opportunity to unite the Filipino people. It is a fitting moment to make a clarion call, an urgent and inspiring appeal for our people to do something; a battle cry that will rally and encourage everyone to join the fight and together brave and face and triumph over the many difficult battles and challenges ahead.
The President's Sona should not only be a blueprint for the national socio-economic-political agenda in the next twelve months or even for the next six years, it should be an honest-to-goodness dialogue with the Filipino people. Mrs. President, tell us the real picture and, without ifs and buts, show to us the genuine state of the nation. How bankrupt is our national treasury? How deep down are we in deficit? How overwhelming is our national debt? How severely damaged is our national economy?
The Filipino people will only support government if they know the real score and they realize the magnitude of our national problems. Our citizens will only accept to swallow the "bitter pills" that government is prescribing if they realize that these are necessary and even compulsory for their national and individual survival. /For comments and reactions, email me attyjobertpenaflorida@yahoo.com.
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