Statement on PBBM’s Second SONA

With President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. getting ready to deliver his second State of the Nation Address (SONA) as he marks his first year in office, he must know that he can no longer hide behind the courtesy afforded to newly-installed presidents.

A year into his term, the so-called “honeymoon period” has long passed and his administration must accept accountability for its year at the helm. If the last 12 months since the president’s first SONA are any indicator, it is becoming clear that the overwhelming faith of 31 million Filipinos who voted for him was misplaced.

Among the first casualties of Marcos Jr.’s first year in office was his electoral campaign’s theme of “unity”. Reports of intrigue and in-fighting began to leak out shortly after Marcos assumed office, with the squabbling for appointments and attempts by one faction to get ahead of the others revealing deep fissures in the so-called UniTeam.

The early maneuverings were responsible for the quick exit of one of the President’s closest cronies, the Executive Secretary, followed shortly after by the Press Secretary. But perhaps the most striking incident was the apparent demotion of former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from her role as Senior Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives due to suspicions that she was plotting to remove the incumbent Speaker and presidential cousin, Martin Romualdez from his post.

But the troubles within the administration camp pale in comparison to the obvious struggles in governance. The lack of a clear, defining vision, beyond the usual platitudes, was an early criticism of Marcos’ government with the President himself setting a low bar of supposedly cobbling together a “functional government” as an accomplishment.

Marcos Jr.’s stubborn refusal to address the issue of his family’s unpaid estate taxes, allegedly amounting to Php203 billion, his silence on the previous administration’s brutal drug war and other human rights abuses, and his lukewarm response to calls for wage increase and jobs creation drive exposed where his government’s priorities lie, or more accurately, where they don’t.

Despite the national debt already reaching Php14.10 trillion as of April this year, the president has chosen to continue the borrowing spree which began under his predecessor’s term. But while Duterte had the Covid pandemic to justify the surging debt stock, what is Marcos Jr.’s excuse? If the optimistic picture of a stable and growing economy being painted by the government’s economic managers is true, why then are they proposing to borrow a whopping Php2.46 trillion next year?

With the government spin doctors touting the billions of dollars of investment commitments every time the president goes on one of his frequent foreign trips, it is easy to get the impression that the country should be swimming in foreign financing by now. And yet, this is clearly not the case. For, if it were true, surely, we would not need to increase borrowing levels beyond what even the notoriously debt-dependent Duterte administration incurred at the height of the pandemic. Certainly, there would be no “urgency” for the establishment of the very controversial, very questionable, Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF). The façade of a stable, robust economy will be even more difficult to maintain in the coming months as the administration grapples with the reality of persistent budget deficits, low FDI numbers and a debt-to-GDP ratio still hovering above 60 percent.

The speed with which the MIF Act was passed in the Marcos ally-dominated Congress contrasted sharply with the foot-dragging on calls for wage increase. With ordinary Filipinos struggling to make ends meet as inflation, which reached a 14-year high of 8.1% in December 2022, further eroded the peso’s purchasing power, the recently-approved Php 40 wage hike in Metro Manila falls pitifully short of the demands for a more substantial, nation-wide, across-the-board increase from progressive labor groups.

Then, there is the sad state of the agriculture sector. The President’s decision to take the reins of the Department of Agriculture, ostensibly, so he could personally oversee the implementation of reforms meant to address long-standing issues in the sector, has proved worrisome at best. Marcos Jr. was clearly in way over his head as smugglers, big traders, and entrenched interests took advantage, resulting in collapsing prices at the farmgate even as prices of agricultural products soared at the retail level. The much-awaited Php 20 per kilo rice, a populist, but ultimately, unrealistic campaign battlecry, never materialized.

Add to all of this, the very obvious swing towards the United States-led anti-China alliance that risks adding more fuel to the already combustible situation in the region and unnecessarily embroiling the country in a war not of our own choosing. The expansion of military exercises and the decision to allow the Americans to access additional sites under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) have already received their fair share of criticism. Fisherfolk in Zambales complain that they were denied access to their traditional fishing grounds for the duration of joint military drills in their area while the local government of Cagayan has opposed the building of EDCA sites in their province, calling them a “magnet for attack by US adversaries”.

As Marcos Jr. delivers his second SONA, he will find it harder to convince the people that his “Bagong Pilipinas” is anything more than a re-hash of old policies inherited from his predecessors and jealously defended by an entrenched bureaucratic elite of neo-liberal technocrats. His government’s current course mirrors many of the debt-fueled, market-led, anti-people polices of the past that have failed to bring about genuine and sustainable development for our people.

Thus, as he plots his administration’s path forward, Marcos Jr. would be well-advised to draw lessons from his father’s infamous legacy. After all, ballooning debt coupled with growing economic vulnerabilities which were swept under the rug and a desperate mass populace barely able to keep their heads above water helped precipitate the crisis that ended the elder Marcos’ authoritarian rule. Unless he wants to see history repeating itself, he would do well to consider changing course.

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