Are Pea, Assenso Pinoy and GMA’s SONA (State of the Nation Address)

In the mid-’80s, I facilitated with the staff of the Institute of Cultural Affairs regional conferences in Are Pea (RP) on sharing approaches that worked in village level socio-economic development. The ICA was instrumental in creating through its asset-based community development method the Sudtonggan Rock Industry that would produce the now familiar Mactan stone façade material for gated homes in the ’80s and ’90s. Some of it even made its way to buildings in the CNMI.

Features of the conferences included both public programs and civil sector services, corporate ventures and private entrepreneurs. One of the Institute’s principle of authentic economic development is that services have to be commercially profitable to sustain it; even education as a social program has to be operated so that revenues exceeds expenditures, making it a viable and sustainable operation.

Two events this week featured images of viable entrepreneurship and sustainable social programs. First is the TV program Assenso Pinoy, which features successful ventures in the private sector. Its radio component airs examples of profitable entrepreneurship. Ebullient and populist Frank Cardona of Radio Corp. scours the countryside for examples the programs can air. One is an inventor who devised a simple tool to use discarded styrofoam for signage. Pagcor’s facilities at the Manila Pavilion hosted the program’s third year anniversary. The examples may sound tacky, or even contrived, but the fact that a media group is seeking out local asset-based business enterprises that work amidst the current widespread skepticism and cynicism is itself a notable feat.

The second event happened this Monday when Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) delivered her State of the Nation Address (SONA). GMA’s image has been scarred by incidence of deceit and tarred by the alleged complicity of her immediate family to corruption. She survived a challenge to the validity of her election when the protesting opponent died, rendering any possible judgment for the plaintiff moot and academic. It, however, did not erase the picture of a pretender to the islands “republican” throne.

Ms. GMA’s oratory was well coached. She began with a broad context of the critical turn in world history. She latched on to the global crisis brought about by the rapid rise of the cost of oil, the swift and searing industrial ascent of India and China, and the perennial rice shortage in the country. “Complex times defies simple and easy solutions,” she intoned. While interdependence with allies needs to continue, “we still strive for greater self-reliance,” she added.

She claimed that tough and unpopular choices were made (taking a side glance at her rock bottom rating in the polls) but that “we are prepared for the crisis; we have the money to feed the people and pay for the fuel.”

It was a rational, well-crafted speech and delivered by a seasoned politico with the compelling props including the jeepney driver who doubled his take-home earnings because of some municipal ordinance, the heroic 15-year-old boy who saved his family in raging waters, and others. Quirino Province town mayor Camma, however, upstaged everyone when he decided to wear a literally cheeky and colorful bahag (g-string), overshadowing the renderings of the traditional couturiers.

But the announcement that poverty rates in the country is at its lowest in 20 years was no consolation to the alternative State of the Union gathering outside of the Batasan Pambansa (Congress). GMA’s care for the underprivileged, teachers, OFWs and ordinary people did not feel compelling enough to the parliament of the street.

Traveling in northern Luzon the previous week, I passed by the Taggat Sur Elementary School compound in Claveria, Cagayan. The school is surrounded by healthy rainforest trees, and I was struck by the incongruous comparison of the school with its infamous and rapacious namesake, the Taggat Sawmill, that stripped Cagayan-Kalinga-Apayao of its virgin forest stands, while reportedly under-declaring its log shipments to Taiwan and Japan by a 1,000 percent, shortchanging the public coffers its due.

Something about Madame GMA’s litany of accomplishments sounded hollow, and her list of promises to low energy users and small hospitals, supplementary calamity budget and no income tax for under 200K pesos earners, struck me as somewhat like extolling the virtues of the Taggat Sur Elementary School grounds to justify the previous logging operations of the Taggat Sawmill!

I sat after the SONA speech at the lobby of the old QC Sulo Hotel, still a favored hangout of politically-active luminaries. The clientele belong to the group that GMA referred to as the favored few consumers of 84 percent of the imported oil, and 90 percent of the country’s generated electricity. Survivors of every political dispensations, these are people who are lucid about the fact that the periodic political sarzuela that Metropolitan Manila gets to play on behalf of the nation has no impact, for example, on stemming the rampant smuggling of locally grown rice to more lucrative overseas markets, leaving the government-subsidized imports to the pickings of the well-connected traders and brokers, and giving the impression that the Filipino farmer is not producing enough to meet local consumption. Rice self-sufficiency as a goal is a farce when, in fact, people are earning tons behind the artificially induced shortage by exporting the produce to alien tables.

The SONA is the World bank quadrupling loans so that Are Pea can service its debts and double it in the process, the government subsidizes seeds to rice farmers while population growth remains above 2 percent, natural family planning pacifies the RC hierarchy which the middle class happily ignores, the government swine-raising loan is 5 billion pesos down in collectibles, and the terminated land reform program is being pushed once more after it failed to do its job in the last 60 years.

Somehow the state of the sidewalk on Matalino St. QC by the Heart Center spoke more of the state of the nation. A mother suckles her emaciated infant on the sidewalk not too far from an open sewer where the collapsed cover remains in disrepair after it caved in from one of the periodic calamitous typhoons; sidewalk hawkers induce passersby to patronize the makeshift food stalls susceptible to dust and flies as Mercedez Benz-riding matronas drag their kids and ayahs along the street corridor from the upscale Trellis and lowly Jollibee; and the oblivious but incorrigible masa live their daily lives patronizing the myriad of street vendors while the inefficient ubiquitous pedicabs subvert the physical fitness that would normally come from walking.

A young lawyer with a gargantuan social conscience and a pro bono practice for downtrodden clients, nevertheless, do not winch to show off the designer watch, pens, and pencil set he just acquired for 900K pesos, an amount that the hotel doorman could not earn in a year if his life depended on it. Are Pea casually takes it for granted as normal to have a few fabulously wealthy among its citizens, amidst a sea of extremely poor compliant workers in this blessed Land of the Morning.

Let’s hope Madame GMA does not make the mistake of admonishing the well-off regarding the masses: “Let them eat cake!” Meanwhile, a dear colleague, upon reading this reflection, commented that perhaps, since I am being playful with the nation’s acronyms, and given the situation in the land, I should call it Are Pee!

Oh Kay!