Critique on P-Noy’s 2011 State of the Nation Address
1. The presence of the members of the Diplomatic Corps is grossly devalued with a State of the Nation speech using the Filipino language than the usual currency.
2. In a scale of 1 to 10, it’s crystal clear that low to zero priority is given to any kind of infrastructure development.
3. Countless times, P-Noy stammers showing only his equal discomfort with the Filipino language.
4. Use of results of poll surveys is selective highlighting only that hunger was down from 20.5 to 15.1; credit rating upgraded 4 times; unemployment rate from 8% to 7.2% – but nothing more follows – so there were no numbers to crunch contrary to an earlier claim that the sona is built of hard and verifiable facts & figures.
5. There is nothing much of substance in the speech and this might logically reflect the speechwriter’s less-than-average grasp of what high points to post in terms of P-Noy’s accomplishments.
6. Generalizing from singular instances – electrification in an LGU, water supply in an LGU, and road in an LGU – is pedantic logic.
7. P-Noy, fiction or non-fiction, made mention that – Conditional Cash Transfer have benefited the poor, PNCC rid of the virus of corruption, a costly P18 billion dredging stopped, reformed DPWH biddings saved P2.5 billion, annual rice imports adjusted from 1.3 million metric tons to 660,000 metric tons saving for the government in the process, and carnapping cases were reduced.
8. When P-Noy speaks of sea change, he expects investment to flow in; he detects the problem of job mismatch; the problem of procurement as not being ‘centrally planned’;, government budget or funds as being ‘chopped-chopped’, ransacked,
9. Our college dean gave P-Noy a grade of 4 which at UP means incomplete or in need of remedial and that not even surprised me a bit.
10. It escapes comprehension why P-Noy favored PNP with the king’s largesse like a housing project to include those from the BFP, BJMP as well as the AFP to the exclusion of our un-armed and civilian agencies of government. In fact, with bulk purchases for the AFP, PNP, and DOJ even, it seems clear how P-Noy wanted to ‘militarize’ the justice department, for reasons known only to him.
11. It appears as an uncharacteristic over-fixation a timeline of one year within which to jail public officials charged with graft and corruption with the Office of the Ombudsman to be ‘transformed’, sort of, into a special court to run after grafters in government.
12. P-Noy could be in error to subscribe to the view that the CCT administered by DSWD has a 92% compliance considering that in reality, it has only benefitted about 200,00 though the target was 1.3 million and further that the final target is 2.3.million.
13. The ‘utak wang-wang’ that he attacks might just become the position he defends in praxis – as future events are likely to manifest given that the strong anti-corruption campaign can be made as a good cover for actually committing it.