Category: SONA

SONAkakaduda 2024 #FactsFirst

PBBM: Mahigit limanglibo at limang daang flood control projects ang natapos na at marami pang iba ang kasalukuyang ginagawa sa buong bansa. [Applause]

The following night bumuhos ang katakutakot na ulan at bumaha nang bonggang bongga across Luzon, even in places that never used to flood, so reminiscent of Ondoy2009, The following day a state of calamity was declared in all of Metro Manila, Bataan, Bulacan, Batangas, and Cavite. [Ambilis ng balik]

DJ Chacha https://x.com/_djchacha/status/1816275607157874692 
Last year, 147.5 Billion Pesos ang total budget for flood control projects for Metro Manila only. Sa lake ng halaga na yan paulit ulit pa rin ang problema natin sa baha. Anyare? 

PING LACSON
It is because most of the budget for the flood control projects flood the pockets of the proponents in Congress in connivance with the implementing agencies and their favorite contractors.

So, were there really 5,500 finished flood control projects?  If yes, what difference did they make? Totoo ba na walang-epek sapagkat substandard ang materyales at trabaho sapagkat kung minsan halos kalahati na lang ang pondo dahil sa mga komisyon ng kongresista, DPWH, LGU, at contractor? [Guys, mahiya naman kayo]

So now I’m wondering, too, about other stuff BBM said at the SONA that were met with great joy by nation: the ban on POGOs and the unequivocal stand on the West Philippine Sea, in particular. 

Already nakikiusap ang PAGCOR that “12 of the 43 POGO companies” be spared kasi masyadong marami ang mawawalan ng trabaho. Yan na rin ang concern ni Senator Tolentino sa isang interview with Karen Davila back in June that I blogged on: #BagongPilipinasWalangPOGO.

G. Senador, lumang tugtugin na ang ganyang justification: na may mga Pinoy na mawawalan ng trabaho. Iyan na rin ang daíng ng mga taga-Zambales at Pampanga nung isasara na ang US bases. But the good Senators of the 8th Congress agreed that the welfare of the whole, the common good, is more important than the welfare of the few.

Besides, the US bases and POGOs were bad ideas to begin with.

And yeah, great that he took such an unequivocal stand on the West Philippine Sea and had the grace to thank our fishermen, coast guards, and soldiers for their vigilance and sacrifice. I was hoping he would say, too, that the repairs of BSP Sierra Madre are to proceed apace whether China likes it or not ’cause #AtinAngAyungin! Alas, bitin. [Unless I missed it lang]

There’s a lot more na kaduda-duda especially re the grand promises of infra and ayuda. Saan kaya kukuha ng pera na panggastos? Lubog na tayo sa utang.  Bugbog na tayo sa taxes. Paano na ba. 

Looking for kakampi, post-SONA, it was good to hear some credible pundits airing similar concerns on social media.

Check out Christian Esguerra’s political podcast Facts and Fiction in President Marcos Jr.’s 2024 SONA  with guests Pulse Asia president and political science Prof Ronnie Holmes, RJ activist and PNoy’s political adviser ex-Sec Ronald Llamas, UP econ prof. and ex-Finance USec Cielo Magno, and PR strategist Alan German na anak ni PR OG Reli whom I sort of knew back in the days.

Holmes, Llamas, and Magno are better informed than most, with a sense of the true state of affairs, past to present, and who clearly care about nation. German is a glib PR political tactician who always seems to know more than he’s telling and teases with tips on how-to-sell politicians, among other powertrippers. Host Esguerra, once of ANC, steers the talk with a GenZ’s take on national concerns that tends to provoke discussion, though only up to a point. 

Unlike public affairs TV talkshows of yore, there’s a lot of banter, chortling, private jokes, whatever, between Esguerra and German, Esguerra and Llamas, apparently to keep the talk from getting too serious,  or maybe his regulars like his GenZ sense of humor, I’m not sure. Whatever, it’s medyo nakaka-put-off, but the serious exchanges were | are worth staying for. 

The same goes for Magno’s Chikahan podcast that premiered the Friday before the SONA with Llamas as senatoriable Edu Mansanas. It was the best conversation I’d heard yet on the state of the nation 2024, though you’d have to sit through some  patawa and pababaw moments that interrupt trains of thought. And parang the sax and sing-along numbers are for another kind of podcast altogether. 

If senior-short-memory serves, Magno and Llamas had a brief exchange about the pink movement, recalling what that campaign was like, how huge the crowds, how magical, parang EDSA, or something to that effect [sorry ang hirap hanapin ng exact words]. That was a pretty solid base of 14M – 15M voters, as it turns out — some 14.4M voted her in as VP in 2016, and some 15M voted her for president in 2022. 

And if my social media algo is any gauge, buhay na buhay pa ang kakampinks  — a third force neither pro-Marcos nor pro-Sara — naghihintay lang ng timon at direksyon. Which brings me back to Esguerra’s and Magno’s podcasts, the likes of which can be the perfect vehicles for thinking Filipinos with a bias for the Common Good to discuss current issues frankly and in depth, hopefully towards a consensus to organize around certain advocacies — like flood control, land use, anti-dynasty, proper wage hike, divorce law, atbp. — that sina Bam and Chel et al. could campaign on and carry into Congress in 2025.  Hope springs.

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SONA blogs across three admins 2008 – 2019

SONA 2019 message: he ain’t no lame duck, not yet anyway

ChaCha: Duterte’s endgame #SONA2018 #NoToChaCha

SONAkakasindak 2017

sona, tsona, torre de manila #takeitdown (2015)

SONAkakaiyak (2014)

SONA’s deafening silence on coco levy loot atbp. (2013)

SONA as farce (2013)

the spin that is SONA(kakasuya) (2011)

SONAkakadismaya (2010)

kontra-SONA (2008)

SONA 2019 message: he ain’t no lame duck, not yet anyway

Ambition’s back, big-time
Manolo Quezon

Alan Peter Cayetano’s zombie speakership began, not with a bang, but with a whimper. The breakfast he threw for legislators didn’t seem to be well attended based on a tweeted photo. But his smooth election accomplished demonstrating that the President is well and truly back in the saddle. It marks the end of two years of his public standing having to claw its way back to where it stood during his first and second State of the Nation Address (Sona).  Read on….

ChaCha: Duterte’s endgame #SONA2018 #NoToChaCha

Katrina SS

The Duterte government is on overdrive, providing us all with requisite distractions from the fact that the Duterte-appointed consultative committee has drafted a federal constitution to the President’s liking, and we’re all back to this discussion, not about whether or not we even want charter change, or if it’s necessary at all, but about how it’s going to happen.

Let that sink in.

Duterte’s propagandists and chacha advocates have been able to bring it to this point when we’re not even discussing whether or not charter change will happen but how it will happen. The President and his people have muscled their way through this charter change push — we’re talking THREE different federal constitutions after all since August 2016 — and it has been able to do this by utilizing what we’ve seen government do consistently and viciously the past two years: chaos-by-design.

Read on…

SONAkakasindak 2017

imagine. the president who disappeared on us twice last june (including on Independence Day) for several days at a time due to undisclosed health issues — nagpahinga lang daw — delivered a two-hour speech in congress, then went outside the batasan and berated the leftist rallyists for some fifteen minutes, and then went back in for an hour-long press conference.  all this with nary a hint or whine of weariness.  awesome performance for a 72-year old.  i wondered what he was on, some upper, surely?  or maybe he was just still super high from the overwhelming support of the house and the senate that had recently okayed the extension of martial law in mindanao for another 5 months?

whatever.  the speech was vintage duterte.  belligerent, brusque, bellicose.  unrelenting on the drug war.  no apparent change in strategy: first, kill the demand, that is, kill the addicts.  second, stop the supply, that is, the drug lords, and so he continues to seek the death penalty.  meanwhile, or should i say, otherwise, nakita naman natin ang nangyari kay espinosa the druglord at kay marcos the policeman.  yung una na-rub-out while in jail, yung huli nasuspend sandali tapos naibalik rin sa puwesto at tila mapo-promote pa in 6 months.  ika nga ni duterte sa minamahal niyang mga pulis at sundalo, yang mga human-rights-human-rights, wala yan! I.HAVE.YOUR.BACKS!  ang sweet, di ba.

but i must say, he pushed the right buttons a few times — calling out the mining industry that pollute farms and seasides  and, even, calling for industrialization, wow!  calling out the supreme court for the RH TRO, and, even, america for refusing to return the bells of balangiga — quite effectively confounding critics, raising hopes anew, even if only a little.  cheap thrills.

the bad news — though good news to many — is that the president seems to be gearing up to call off the peace talks with the Left.  i suspect that if there had not been that ambush on his PSG the week before the SONA (No ceasefire, no prior notice: Joma explains attack on PSG convoy.  read also satur ocampo’s Gov’t ceasefire demand snags peace talks anew) the president’s men would have come up with some other reason anyway.  sa joint session of congress pa lang nuong july 22, when it convened to vote for the extension of martial law in mindanao, maya’t maya ang ungkat sa CCP-NPA, almost in the same breath as the maute and abu sayyaf and other terrorist groups.

but the peace talks, the CASER (Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms) round, especially, is our only hope for a truly “comfortable life for all.”  without it, duterte’s campaign promise of a new economic model that will lift the masses from poverty will remain just that, a promise.  balik na naman tayo sa trickle-down eklat and dole-outs just because the president’s economists are loathe to give up the goose that lays their ilk (and only their ilk) the golden eggs, pardon the cliche.

nakakasindak sa lahat, of course, is that the mayor who called for a stop to lumad killings in 2015 is now the president who threatens to bomb lumads and their schools to extinction for being allied with the Left.  if the president follows through on this, it might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  again, pardon the cliche. (we have become a nation of cliches.)

i guess, like erap, the president made campaign promises vis a vis corruption and the economy that he didn’t realize were undoable until he was himself in the driver’s seat?  i guess it was too good to last, the president’s accommodation of the Left that is, was? unprecendented in recent history.  and then, again, Can DU30 afford a break with the Left?   read marlen v. ronquillo:

A year ago, in his SONA, Mr. Duterte promised a “peace for the living“ with a peace pact with the Left and the Muslim secessionist groups in mind. His accommodation of the Left is unprecedented in recent history. Through a series of tactical moves—naming Leftists to his official family, convening a serious peace panel that promptly opened up peace talks with the leaders of the Left, and supporting that peace process wholeheartedly—his strategic goal was to make history by going the way of Colombia in dealing with the FARC.

As mayor of Davao City, Duterte dealt with the Left. He left the Left alone and the Left left him alone to pursue his Davao agenda. But that was a smaller, more manageable setting.

Now, all of these grand initiatives on a national scale are in jeopardy.

Question: Can DU30 afford a break with the Left, the one sector that he wants on his side and did a lot of political accommodation to win it?

The Left is often dismissed as a “sunset group” but the application of that is limited. As a rebel group with an agenda of seizing state power to put in place a government of central planning guided by Marx, Lenin and Mao, that is deemed as next to impossible. Its chosen road to state power, that of encircling the seat of power from the countryside and peasant hordes overwhelming the reactionary forces of the state, is now a failed approach. As far back as the 1970s, a group of heretics led by the late Popoy Lagman wanted to change strategy from the Maoist version to the Nicaraguan model.

… While the Left has a very narrow path to seizing state power, it remains the most potent enemy of the established order. It is the only group with an above-ground force, an army of ideologues that can argue from the mainstream, a cadre of Marxist intellectuals that can speak from a perch of high moral ascendancy. There is nothing more morally right than preaching from a perch of liberating the poor, the huddled masses.

The Left is spread out and almost omnipresent. It has leaders and advocates from the academe, the small businesses, organized labor, the peasantry, the Church and almost every institution that matters.

There are uninvolved people who nonetheless believe in the rightness of economic parity, social justice and egalitarian causes, which makes them sympathetic – and closer to the left-wing beliefs – than any other belief system, including the flawed liberal democracy. I know of many good and decent people under this category.

And when the Left opposes a particular government, it is with fire in the belly and the rage is not dictated by focus groups and survey results. The mainstream oppositionists would not oppose a President as popular as Mr. Duterte. The Left will fight and fight to the death the most popular President on the planet.

Mr. Duterte knows this. Deep in his heart, he does not want an enemy as relentless and as committed as the Left.

What the strategists of Mr. Duterte fear most is a tactical coalition between the Left and the mainstream groups. Once this happens, the opposition to Mr. Duterte will not be of the timid, calibrated kind. But the type and kind of protests that embody the fury of the Left – go for broke and without heed of the consequences.

At this point, the last thing Mr. Duterte needs is the Left protesting on the streets with fury in the eyes and fire in the belly.