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Monday, February 27, 2012

As Aquino perorates, unemployment rises

By J.A. de la Cruz / Coast-to-Coast

THE irony could not have been more pronounced. In the run-up to the 26th anniversary of Edsa Uno, President Aquino went to town perorating about the “unfinished project to restore democracy and bring a better life to our people” culminating with that harangue to his listeners at the Edsa Shrine last Saturday to “…go and make it right.” Pointing a finger at the ghost of martial law in the company of former President Fidel V. Ramos and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, principal administrators of that 14-year rule, he then proceeded to lambast his favorite “punching bag-for-the-moment”—the judiciary and Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Said he: “Now, after 26 years, it is clear that our fight is not yet finished….As we link our arms in the straight path, I trust that we can reach a society that is free from a judiciary with two faces—one with a partial justice system and another with balanced scales. If you want to remain in the old system, go ahead and pretend to be deaf. Pretend to be blind. Don’t speak. Don’t participate. But if you believe that there’s something wrong with the system and that this has to be corrected, let’s go and push back. Let’s participate, let’s make it right.”

He added: “Our country is now facing a crossroad. In one direction is the weedy path, where the influential holds the scales of justice and those who manipulate the law benefit. In the other is the straight path where the rules are clear, justice favors no one and those who are at fault are made answerable. Let’s remember. Martial law happened because Filipinos kept silent for too long. Let us now move before it is too late. Let us now move so that we can quickly leave behind the darkness in the past.”

Well said. Fighting and colorful words, but, unfortunately adhered to and promoted selectively, if at all, under this administration. Various sectors including those considered the President’s political allies were one in saying that the speech was just a rehash of his previous harangues and—like all of those previous advices—were likely to stay as such. No follow-through and no concrete achievements that would serve as input yet again for next year’s Edsa speech.

The militant group Bayan Muna was more forthright and condemnatory. “We commemorate Edsa Uno not because it represents a heroism that is singularly ascribed to anyone person or political color. We commemorate Edsa Uno because it represents the Filipino people’s dreams and aspirations that have yet to be fulfilled,” the group’s statement advised, “and these dreams and aspirations will not likely be fulfilled even under the second Aquino regime. We definitely have no illusions in that regard.”

Which is precisely what Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. also noted with concern as the nation remembered last Saturday that uprising in 1986, which ousted his father and namesake, then President Ferdinand Marcos, from power. “Most of what we hear now from all sides,” Marcos said, “are still within the ambit of propaganda. But I certainly am concerned with the state of our country today, more than a quarter of a century since the experience of Edsa Uno, as it has come to be known.”

Unlike the President, he has decided not to engage in the blame game but passed on certain questions as his way of making an evaluation, perhaps even a comparison, of the country’s situation before and after Edsa Uno. “Has poverty been alleviated?” Marcos asked. “Is the country’s wealth more equitably distributed? Do we have more jobs available at home? Has there been a rise in the quality of our education? Are we self sufficient in our daily food requirements? What about the crime situation? Crime? Insurgency? Corruption? Basic services? Health?”

Like all other concerned citizens including those in the Aquino administration, the young Marcos had only one advice—we have to do more in order to catch up with our Asian neighbors in terms of development—noting that over the 25-year period from 1986 to the present these countries have gained much ground while we wallowed in finger pointing and bashing.

Yes, the development road map, more than anything else, should now be our main concern as the Edsa Uno days fade into memory. Which is why addressing the rising unemployment problem perhaps should preoccupy the President’s days, weeks and months more than any other issue if we are to inaugurate a “new, reinvigorated Philippines” come this administration’ midpoint in 2013.

The unemployment conundrum
There can be no more denying that adult unemployment has increased from September 2011 to December 2011. The SWS has called it so with the results of its December 3 to 7, 2011 survey. Even the government’s statistical offices and the DOLE have so affirmed such an increase—although the latter’s figures are less mind-boggling than the SWS.

In the SWS survey, adult unemployment reached 24 percent in December 2011 as compared with the 20.2 percent in September with most of the unemployed having resigned or were retrenched. That high figure, almost one of every four Filipinos, means that at least 9.7 million Filipinos were out of work as of the end of the year and will likely join the ranks of CCT recipients if the DSWD seriously cleanses its roll of such beneficiaries and enroll those who are really in dire need. But that is going ahead of our story.

What makes this upward unemployment trend more problematic is the fact that this vast, expanding army of the unemployed has been with us for the past seven years. Not just the last two quarters of last year. To think that unemployment increases the incidence of hunger and you have a looming social problem at your hands.

To be sure, adult unemployment has not been as severe as last year’s. For the whole of last year, the unemployment incidence averaged 23.6 percent while in 2010 it was 22.6 percent. That spike in December can probably still be pushed back if only the President and his Cabinet get to sit down and work out a kind of “emergency employment generation” plan. Not the CCT-like “cash-for-employment” in the early 1960s but a longer-term, institutionalized plan covering all sectors of the economy with emphasis on those considered to be the most labor-intensive ones like tourism, agriculture and infrastructure.

As an aside, how we had hoped that by next month, the much-awaited releases of billions of pesos of “impounded” funds, especially those for the local government units and other sectors, will already commence with all deliberate speed. Perhaps by next month as the quarter comes to an end we will also finally see the bidding out and proper implementation of the first- ever PPP under the President. At least, that will banish from the text brigades and Facebook interactions the pejorative “PowerPoint Presentation” (PPP) plus P (Pala), which have come to characterize the administration’s centerpiece economic program. Apart from the obvious infrastructure projects, which can readily be restructured to come under a PPP arrangement, we are hopeful that some tourism-oriented ones will also be put in the front burner.

Also, we look forward to the passage of an equitable “sin-tax” reform package which balances the government’s desire to collect more taxes for social services with the valid concerns of such stakeholders as the tobacco farmers and other entities servicing the cigarette-manufacturing sector as well as the sugar, cassava and other farmers which are traditionally the cultivators of raw materials for the alcohol manufacturers. Instead of pushing for a unitary system, the government should simplify the rates and probably bring these down to the most manageable levels (four is what we are hearing) which will stabilize these sectors, prevent rampant smuggling and bootlegging and lessen the health costs of a growing population which continues to host a good number of smokers and drinkers. Sana na nga.

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