Noynoy Aquino’s inaugural speech: All sentiment, no substance

One consolation for Philippine President Noynoy Aquino after making his inaugural speech is that most inaugurals are often forgotten almost as they are delivered, with only a few surviving the test of time and becoming part of history and literature. Even U.S. President Barack Obama, a highly accomplished orator and speaker, failed to set the tone of his administration during his inauguration with the famed rhetoric and oratory people had expected from him.

Obama’s inauguration speech was deemed by some well-meaning critics as realistic but not soaring, with very few truly memorable pieces of phraseology, no Kennnedy-esque or Rooseveltian quotations for the ages.

It would be asking too much of Noynoy Aquino to deliver a soaring acceptance speech like that of a Ferdinand Marcos or a Manuel Quezon. Noynoy is not an orator and does not pretend to be one.

As the spokesman of the new president said before the inauguration, Noynoy’s speech will be short, clear, and straight to the point. It was said that Noynoy Aquino wrote the speech himself and made nine revisions to it.

Repeating his social contract with the Filipino people which he pledged during the campaign, Noynoy for the umpteenth time, defines the foundation of his administration: “If no one is corrupt, no one will be poor.” Then he rattled off his series of “No mores” such as no more junkets, no more senseless spending, no more influence peddling, no more patronage politics, no more stealing, no more sirens (“wala ng wangwang”), no more short cuts, and no more bribes.

Noynoy Aquino’s inaugural speech hardly sets the tone or the vision for his government, something we all reasonably expect from an incoming president. Instead of taking the opportunity to articulate his administration’s goals, policy and philosophy, Noynoy simply wallows with populist sentiments and vapid rhetoric with meaningless promises, which, to the minds of those who have heard such empty words, will inevitably be broken anyway.

The new president did not offer much of a window through which one can examine the change of political power in the Philippines. On the contrary, Noynoy Aquino’s speech merely signals the continuation of the failed policies of previous administrations, starting from his own mother’s presidency. It seems obvious that Noynoy Aquino has not learned a valuable lesson from her mother’s uneasy tenure as president.

Appointing to the cabinet the same economic managers who presided over the country’s dismal economic performance during the Cory Aquino presidency ensures the perpetuation of deregulation, tariff liberalization and privatizations. These are the same economic policies continued during the Fidel Ramos presidency and consolidated under the presidencies of Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which constitute the main reason for the country’s economic malaise.

While Cory Aquino reinstated the democratic institutions of free elections, representative government, free press and other civil liberties after the fall of the Marcos repressive dictatorship, her legacy, however, will be forever tainted by the missteps taken by her economic policy advisers. Not only did her economic managers surrender to the demands of the International Monetary Fund and large U.S. banks, they were also responsible for laying the groundwork for deregulation, tariff liberalization and privatization that continued with succeeding administrations.

Foreign debt repayment became the national economic priority of the Cory Aquino presidency, an onerous burden caused by the Marcos regime. Debt servicing had been institutionalized in the Automatic Appropriations Act. This means that the repayment of debt must have the first cut in the annual government budget. During the current economic recession, this policy has drastic consequences because it limits what the government could spend in order to stimulate the economy. Noynoy Aquino will be naturally burdened with the consequences of this policy of servicing foreign debt that was laid down by his mother’s administration, with the help and advice of her economic stalwarts some of whom are now in the new president’s cabinet.

Noynoy Aquino must face the fact that there are now more poor people in the Philippines than at any other time in its history. That this is not simply because of corruption but due to misguided economic policies. The country cannot well afford to have more of the same in the next six years if President Noynoy is serious about delivering the Filipino people from the throes of poverty.

The correlation between corruption and poverty, especially by this present administration, is overblown. No one disagrees with Noynoy Aquino’s assertion that if no one is corrupt, no one will be poor. But this kind of association is ineffectual as a prescription for dealing with the country’s fundamental problem of poverty. Moral leadership is not necessarily a sufficient condition for successful leadership and governance. Foolhardy policies are, and smart and well-groomed technocrats have been responsible for more poverty than corrupt politicians.

If the presidency of Noynoy Aquino does not reverse the course from the structural adjustment policies of the last 30 years, we will never rise from the economic havoc these policies have created. We will continue to witness debt repayment, huge cutbacks in government spending, trade and financial liberalization, privatization and deregulation and export-oriented production.

Unfortunately, President Noynoy Aquino’s inaugural speech only provided us with some glimmer of hope, mostly on the issues of justice and political reform, and almost without hope in uplifting the majority of our countrymen from the quagmire of poverty.

Some would plea to give the new president a chance. See what happens after the first 100 days, they say. As if that is all the time needed to solve our country’s pressing problems.

The accidental president –Part 2

After coming to Toronto sometime in 1987, I read a story published in one of the city’s major daily newspapers endorsing General Fidel Ramos as the most likely successor to President Cory Aquino, one who could continue the country’s arduous path toward a full-pledged democracy and stability. The story credited Cory Aquino for restoring democracy in the Philippines after almost 20 years of dictatorship.

Fresh from our experience with the sporadic coups against the Aquino government at that time, and struggling through the repressive Marcos regime, I wrote to the newspaper to demystify the belief that Cory Aquino saved the Philippines from the throes of a dictatorship and delivered a new era of democracy. My main argument was that Cory Aquino was a reluctant leader, who ascended to the presidency by accident, that it was the Filipino people’s sentiment and debt of gratitude to her husband Ninoy for his martyrdom that gave her their vote.

Now, history is repeating itself. Noynoy Aquino, the son, also rises on the strength of his parents’ legacy. An inconsequential and do-nothing member of Congress, both as a congressman and senator, Noynoy is at the cusp of becoming the country’s next president. Early results of last Monday’s election gave Noynoy an insurmountable lead over his opponents.

The present political reality in the Philippines is not a rarity. When Rajiv Gandhi, the prime minister of India, was assassinated, party members loyal to him wooed his wife Sonia to succeed him. Sonia refused, perhaps for fear for her life and family. Her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, suffered the same fate that befell her husband Rajiv. Sonia Gandhi later became the president of the Indian National Congress and currently serves as chair of India's ruling United Progressive Alliance.

Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike was the world’s first female head of government, ahead of British PM Margaret Thatcher. Bandaranaike was the widow of a previous Sri Lankan prime minister, and the mother of Sri Lanka’s third president, Chandrika Kumaratunga.

When Kim Sung-il passed away, his son Kim Jong-il ascended to the leadership of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Everyone in North Korea now considers Kim Jong-il as their “Supreme Leader.”

Even former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yee of Singapore did not leave his post quietly. He ensured that his eldest son Lee Hsien Loong would become the country’s third prime minister when he stepped down from power.

This is the same narrative of politics in the Philippines. It runs in and around the family. Almost every congressman or senator is a member of a political dynasty. Noynoy Aquino happens to be the most recent of scions of a political family to assume the reins of government. He will be succeeding another president who came to power on the coat tails of her father’s name and tenure in Malacanang.

But what is so different in the case of Noynoy Aquino?

Prominent among Noynoy’s serious shortcomings is his continuous self-denial of the right of the thousands of farm workers to own their piece of land at Hacienda Luisita. Because of the Cojuangco family’s intransigence, Hacienda Luisita has earned an infamous place in the history of agrarian reform in the Philippines.

The Cojuangco family took ownership of Hacienda Luisita from Tabacalera y Compania in 1958 through a loan from the Government Service Insurance System and a private loan from the Manufacturers Trust Company of New York under a guarantee by the Central Bank of the Philippines. It was President Ramon Magsaysay who offered the sale of the hacienda to the Cojuangcos through his protégé, Ninoy Aquino, a Cojuangco son-in-law. The sale was consummated during the term of President Carlos P. Garcia.

One of the terms of the loan agreement between the Cojuangcos and their creditors was the transfer of the hacienda to the hands of the farmers by 1967. This never happened.

When Cory Aquino ran for president, she promised to redistribute the hacienda’s land to its farmers under a comprehensive land reform program. After assuming the presidency, Cory Aquino changed her heart and the Cojuangcos continued to hold ownership under a stock distribution option, which meant that the farmers would be considered co-owners through stock ownership and the hacienda would be exempt from land reform because it was now a corporation. Stock options were never distributed and the farmers were never considered co-owners.

Noynoy Aquino insists that there are no tenants or farmers in Hacienda Luisita based on the stock option plan, hence there is no need to redistribute the land. If there were any land, according to Noynoy, it would be too inefficiently small to distribute among more than 5,000 farmers. Thus, it was unrealistic to give every farmer one hectare of land to till. But Noynoy Aquino doesn’t understand that the farmers can still own the land as members of a farmer’s co-operative, which is in existence and operates in Hacienda Luisita.

To insist and to deny that there are no tenants or farmers in Hacienda Luisita reveal something is definitely awry in Noynoy’s frame of mind. Some of his opponents voiced their concerns about reports that Noynoy was seeing a psychiatrist and raised the issue of competence. There is nothing wrong about consulting a psychiatrist, and even if this were true, would not prove Noynoy’s incompetence for the highest position in the land.

What could be more damning evidence of incompetence than Noynoy’s continuing resolute defence of his family’s stake in Hacienda Luisita? The father of one of the victims of the massacre during the farm workers’ picket at Hacienda Luisita on November 16, 2006, aptly summed up Noynoy Aquino's incompetence when he said: “How can Noynoy lead the country when he cannot manage to solve our problem here at Hacienda Luisita? This is a small piece of land, a very small problem compared to running the country. Yet, he can’t do anything about it.”

For the farmers who have been tilling the hectares of land at Hacienda Luisita, the continuing ownership of the Cojuangco family mirrors the oligarchic control of the country by its powerful few. To them, the agrarian dispute at Hacienda Luisita stands out as an issue of competence for Noynoy Aquino.

But the presidential election would soon be over in a few days, and when all the votes have been counted, Noynoy Aquino will be proclaimed the country’s new president. Just as reluctant as his mother Cory to lead the country, expect Noynoy and his accidental presidency to yield nothing more than a mandate of false hopes and empty rhetoric to Filipinos.