WE WOULD like to apologize to our readers for our missing column in yesterday’s online edition of the Mindanao Times.
We had unexpected visitors who came to the house in time that we were to write our column for yesterday. They were distant relatives who came to Davao City from Valencia, Bukidnon who decided to drop by the house on their way home to meet our family. Our visitors left Bogo City, Cebu for Bukidnon some 40 years ago.
They have paid us a visit about 15 years ago when both our children were still teenagers. On their visit the other day, they were already bringing their young grandchildren, all of whom were first-time travelers to Davao City.
Indeed, time flies so fast that we and our visitors are now in the last quarter of our lives, if this was a basketball game.
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No matter who is the President or the political party in power in the national government, the Philippines can never achieve its development objective.
Why, because even a tandem of the country’s top two leaders perceived to be well united to attain a common goal starts disintegrating after a few months of supposedly working together for the entire Filipino nation.
Let us look back at the country’s history of governance starting from the assumption of the late President Corazon C. Aquino. In the first two or three years, Mrs. Aquino and her Vice President Salvador Laurel appeared to be perfect partners in running the country. But starting in the second half of the elder Aquino administration, the late former Vice President was already complaining – and quite loudly – that the woman President was straying from her way.
In a few months l, Laurel quit his alliance with Mrs. Aquino claiming that he could not anymore be a party to the backsliding leadership at that time.
Then came the administration of the late President Fidel V. Ramos. He was a bit lucky because while his VP Joseph Estrada belonged to another political group, Ramos was able to put a handle over Erap by giving him a position that kept him “busy” all throughout the Ramos years.
When Erap became President, his early months in office was already “tumultuous.” What with the remnants of the elder Aquino regime who were routing for Estrada’s Vice President Gloria Arroyo to take over Malacañang. They claimed the ten actor-turned-politician President had converted the Palace into a drinking session venue with friends who had their individual interest enhanced and protected by the Palace tenant.
So Estrada’s administration was characterized as one short era of dodging political attacks that brought all development efforts to a standstill. Then came his impeachment, the trial of which was not concluded because of the second people’s revolution that led to Estrada’s abandoning Malacañang and the installation of his Vice President Gloria M. Arroyo as the new President.
Arroyo’s Presidency ran the country in the remaining years of Estrada’s unfinished term. She was lucky because her then appointed Vice President Teofisto Guingona was not quite active in confronting Ms. Arroyo on issues he did not agree with her.
Arroyo, however, created her own enemies, mostly from the Aquino leaders who helped her on her way to Malacanang. She ran for President in 2004, contradicting her own promise of not running for a full 6-year term.
Then came the “Hello, Garci Scandal” where a recorded call by Ms. Arroyo to the late Commission on Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano requesting the latter to “protect her (Arroyo’s) supposed lead of one million votes over then candidate Fernando Poe, Jr.”
The issue plus the deteriorating economic condition of the country triggered scathing denunciations of Arroyo’s governance. Some sectors of the military even attempted to revolt more than once. But they failed.
Her worst crisis was when several of her Department Secretaries resigned and became her most vicious critics.
Luckily for the shaky Arroyo Presidency, it survived until the 2010 Presidential elections.
When Benigno Simeon Aquino III became President, there was some kind of a lull in the usual destructive criticisms by non-politically aligned groups. He was sort of given a chance to give meaning to his namesake father Benigno Aquino, Jr. who was refuted to be “the best President the country never had.”
It was only the late President Pnoy’s action in responding to the deadly super-typhoon “Yolanda,” and later towards the dying years of his Presidency when his handling of the Mamasapano operation that turned into a massacre of more than 40 special action policemen that made a huge number of Filipinos became critics of his presidency.
When former President Rodrigo Duterte assumed, his administration was characterized as populist. He attempted to end insurgency by talking with its leaders. He failed though. As populist he dismantled a bastion of one big venue of dissent – the giant ABS-CBN broadcast network.
Duterte also caused the revision of the agreement between the government and the two giant water concessionaires that was seen by many to have helped reducing water rates in Metro Manila and its surrounding local governments.
Duterte also handled very well the Philippine government’s response to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. But one of the measures he did earn the ire of some lawmakers and civil society groups was the more than P40 billion overpriced Pharmally deal that his government entered into for the purchase of COVID-19 supplies. The people running the company were known friends to Duterte’s close friend and economic adviser.
Above all, his no-nonsense war against illegal drugs, while appreciated by many especially the ordinary Filipinos, earned Duterte’s administration the harshest rebuked from human rights advocates.
Overall, however, it is hard to argue against the apparent overall economic and social improvement of Philippine society, more so with the many infrastructure projects implemented through his “Build, build, build” program.
Now comes the Marcos Jr.’s administration. The first year and a half of his administration seems to be the epitome of a united effort between him and his Vice President Sara Duterte towards the attainment of the desired “Bagong Pili[inas.”
But when the third year of Marcos Jr.’s administration , the VP’s group, led by no less than her father, started calling the President names difficult to swallow much more accept.
Then came the Congressional probe on the VP’s use of her office and that of the Department of Education’ Intelligence and Confidential Funds. VP Sara was DepEd secretary for almost two years,
The VP’s group could not have taken that move in another way but a retaliation from Malacañang. Since then, the divide between the two top officials of the country has become a major stumbling block for the attainment of what the administration hopes to achieve.
Just imagine that in the country’s most trying times – the occurrence of a series of disastrous calamities capped with the deadliest earthquake that leveled down some areas in Cebu – when unity is most crucial in coming up with a successful response, the President and the Vice President were doing “each to his/her own.”
They seem so distant apart that they were not even communicating while they were in the very same place at the same time.
Can they just for once, and for the sake of the badly affected Filipinos, forget, even temporarily, their enmity and unite to work for an effective response to the calamity?
