Last Sona over, it’s time to choose right
THE last state of the nation address (Sona) of President Benigno C. Aquino III has been delivered, and so we close another chapter in the life of the president. No more promises, no more instigated applause, just a round-up of claimed victories, exaggerated or not, real experience or rhetoric.
Next year, we will be listening to another set of promises by whoever will be elected.
Let us take this power embedded among us as citizens of the Philippines to only install someone who can fulfill our true longing for a tuwid na daan and a government that has compassion for its people.
True, the Aquino government has held accountable a bunch of corrupt officials, but sad to say, it is obvious to all that equally corrupt allies are never even castigated.
True, the Aquino government has been able to shake down the corruptors, including their private sector partners in the person of Janet Napoles, but allies who are in cahoots with Napoles are still around; one even managing to barge into the city to try to impose her idea of good governance, in vain.
True, the economic figures are impressive, but think tanks are one in saying all these growths have never trickled down to the people. Worse, this government has shown an utter lack of compassion for the sufferings of its people, whether it be in the aftermath of typhoon Pablo, typhoon Yolanda, the Zamboanga siege, and the Mamasapano massacre, among many others. It has also become the epitome of indecisiveness and has shown all and sundry how to dawdle and refuse to take responsibility.
If there is any remarkable fete Aquino had ever done, it’s having stayed in power despite his brand of indecisiveness amid major disasters.
Before him, we saw how corruption can be headed by close families as the erstwhile First Gentleman Miguel Arroyo had often been accused of, and before President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, we have seen how a president can gather the most suspicious allies and hold meetings at midnight over bottles of Johnny Walker Blue Label while playing for high stakes in the casino. Four presidents whom we regretted having voted into power. Let us not allow ourselves to do the same. Let us no longer make ourselves be swayed into believing promises of no wangwangs and being the boss, the wellpracticed declarations of walang kumpakumpare, and not be swayed by the drama of Mang Pandoys and children playing with paperboats.