What you will not hear in the President’s speech

By RICARDO SALUDO

In his third State of the Nation Address today, President Be-nigno Aquino 3rd will probably extol the economy’s first-quarter growth, second-fastest in East Asia; the drop in self-rated poverty, hunger and unemployment in recent surveys; the latest credit rating upgrade courtesy of Standard & Poor’s; and the plunder case filed against his predecessor. Oh, and there may be his 47th mention of rice imports ending next year.

As with any speech, of course, there will be economies of truth here and there. The SONA won’t say that the 6.4 percent January-March surge was over the sluggish economy of a year ago. At that time, government under-spending to impress global rating agencies stifled expansion and did little to address the top concerns of investors: not low credit grades, but slow growth and poor infrastructure.

The improved poverty, hunger and joblessness figures would be trumpeted with no mention of the record levels they came down from just three months before. Despite first-quarter growth and nearly P50 billion in conditional cash transfer (CCT) stipends for the poor since July 2010, an unprecedented one in every four Filipinos suffered hunger, one in every three workers could not find work, and more than half the nation considered themselves poor.

Nor will the President be up front about how those indicators of misery would likely get worse again in the current rainy season, now that the usual surge in summer construction and tourism jobs is over. As for imports of the national staple, they may indeed drop to zero next year—just as then president Gloria Arroyo’s 2008-2013 FIELDS program for rice sufficiency had targeted.

Still, those missing details are not as disturbing as other omissions in the President’s report to the people. One is the spate of dying witnesses and disappearing suspects in some celebrated cases under his watch. Among recent casualties were a key witness against a carnapping lord, and those who testified in the Ma-guindanao Massacre trial. As for those evading the law, they include alleged housing fraudster Delfin Lee of Asiatique infamy, accused media killing mastermind and former Palawan governor Jose Reyes, and suspected rights violator Jovito Palparan.

Add to those who flew the coop the foreign gambling cheats who fleeced state casinos over P600 million in May 2011 (see “Pagcor’s grand cover-up,” published in this paper on July 17). The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation reportedly did not object when a judge downgraded the charge against the gang to simple fraud, allowing them to leave the country.

Pagcor figures in another disturbing trend absent from the SONA. Its chairman Cristino Naguiat Jr. is among several close Aquino associates whom the Palace has repeatedly spared from sanction and investigation, and even defended publicly in anomalies. “Industry practice” was how Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda justified the $110,000 in freebies and cash given by a Macau resort firm to Pagcor bosses, including former PNoy classmate Naguiat and his family.

Such Malacañang niceties toward its highly placed friends have become commonplace, such that a recent P4-million bottled water contract awarded by Pagcor sans bidding got mostly shrugs from people. And why not? After all, the public hue and cry over Naguiat, guns and bootleg video aficionado Ronald Llamas, accused jueteng payola bagman Rico Puno, corporate-meddling fellow shooting buddy Virginia Torres, and other top PNoy associates got nowhere.

Aquino’s cronyism—there’s no other word for it—not only undermines his avowed campaign against corruption, but also raises questions about his own integrity. Prosecuting top officials of the past administration won’t make incumbents think twice about veering from the Daang Matuwid if none of them even get investigated, let alone punished or fired over irregularities.

Moreover, it is doubly disturbing that the President has said and done nil about jueteng and smuggling, the reputed source of ruling party funds in every administration, after the public and media furor over those illicit trades died down. In September 2010, after Puno was named by Archbishop Oscar Cruz as jueteng payola recipient, Aquino ordered a crackdown. Then he said nothing more as the numbers game flourished.

Ditto with the uninvestigated disappearance of several thousand uninspected containers in transit between ports, which may explain the drop in drug and gun prices on the street. Just ask anyone who has to deal with Customs if corruption and contraband have grown or diminished since the change in leadership.

Just one more non-mention for those who not only read between the lines of the SONA, but also look for missing lines in their search for the real state of the nation and the administration: Freedom of Information Bill. Over two years since candidate Aquino promised to prioritize the FOI’s passage, it’s gone nowhere, along with the Philippines’ transparency ratings.

Welcome to the real Daang Matuwid.

Ricardo Saludo serves Bahay ng Diyos Foundation for church repair. He heads the Center for Strategy, Enterprise & Intelligence, publisher of The CenSEI Report on national and global issues (report@censeisolutions.com).