Manila Times/Makati

Vice President Jejomar Binay yesterday refused to make any comment on President Benigno Aquino 3rd’s 6th and final State of the Nation Address (Sona), saying he will respond “in due time.”
“In due time [I will be delivering the true Sona],” the vice president told reporters.
He did not want to give any hints on what he will be saying in his “true Sona” because there would be no “excitement” anymore.
Binay said he believes that there should be a true Sona.
“There should be responses. We should answer all your questions,” he said.
He added that he does not feel alluded to in some of the remarks made by the president in his speech, especially when questioned his alleged opponent’s ability to improve the lives of Filipinos.
A political scientist criticised the president’s speech, saying he failed to present the bigger picture in his valedictory.
Clarita Carlos, former president of the National Defense College of the Philippines and now a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, said Aquino should have backed his supposed accomplishments with solid numbers.
“He delivered a very lengthy speech but what we wanted to see was the basis of his speech. Where are the numbers? He just presented graphs and histograms but there are no numbers to explain what these are,” she noted in Filipino.
“I think you lose your audience after 30 minutes. That’s the definition of torture. I just got bored,” Carlos told Radyo Inquirer.
Advocates of overseas workers’ welfare also criticised the President for not acknowledging contributions of migrant workers in his Sona.
“He did not thank the people who contributed to the prospering of the economy,” Lito Soriano, president of LBS Recruitment Solutions, said.
“Without the P6tn remittances of overseas Filipino workers, where would our economy be?” Gemma Comiso of Pinoy Expats/OFW Blog Awards said.
Susan Ople, president of the Blas F Ople Center, said the president failed to give context to the number of returning Filipino workers because of armed conflicts in the Middle East, where a big numbers of overseas workers are being deployed.
KAMPI president Luther Calderon also noted lack of housing policies for returning Filipino workers.
Groups in the agricultural sector expressed dismay over the exclusion of farmers in the president’s Sona.
Rosendo So, chairman of the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (Sinag), said there were no references to rice self-sufficiency, post-harvest and cold storage facilities, food security, agricultural modernization and anti-smuggling efforts.
He added that they were hoping Aquino would mention the wanton importation and the worsening smuggling of agricultural commodities that deprived the government of almost P9bn in lost revenues last year.
Latest data culled by Sinag suggested that a total of P8.4bn was lost last year to the smuggling of just six agricultural commodities.
Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr, has raised the need to verify the figures cited by President Benigno Aquino 3rd in his Sona.
Marcos raised doubts on the accuracy of the figures paraded by Aquino in his speech, saying the numbers are different from the real situation on the ground.
He admitted that it is heartening to hear that the situation of some people who received assistance from the government had improved as illustrated in the individual “success stories” the President presented in his Sona.
“However, there is a need to determine if these individual success stories reflect an improvement in the condition of people who are similarly situated,” Marcos pointed out.
The senator cited the statistics showing an improving job situation in the Philippines, which he said is difficult to understand because over 8mn Filipinos have left the country, and more are leaving to find jobs abroad.
Aquino’s claim of a low unemployment rate of 6.8% is also questionable and it could have been influenced by the revision of the classification of the unemployed, Marcos said.
The lawmaker also raised suspicion on the supposed record high foreign direct investments that reached $6.2bn in 2014, saying the figure could have included “hot money” or money placed in short-term investments that are pulled out by global investors once profits have been made.
“Those kinds of details should be determined to find out how the president came to the conclusions that he spoke about yesterday, so that we can find out the real situation,” Marcos said.
He acknowledged that the administration is correct in supporting programmes such as the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) for social assistance and the K-to-12 for education.
However, Marcos said the CCT program would have been less prone to leakages if the government tapped local government unit as partners instead of implementing it exclusively through the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
As for the K-to-12, he said the implementation of the program needs to be improved. For example, not one classroom needed for the programme has been built and not one of the 39,000 new teachers that the department of education said it needs has been hired.