The Social Security System was so popular in the 1980s to the point that it was used to bolster President Ferdinand Marcos’ candidacy against Ninoy Aquino’s widow Cory in the snap elections of Feb. 7, 1986.
Weeks before Election Day then, SSS sent to all its members —pensioners and non-pensioners —individual letters containing its accomplishments under the 20-year Marcos administration and highlighting the 20 percent pension increase that it was granting on January 1 that year.
SSS has never done this again. Perhaps, it has become wary of the high cost of mailing millions of letters to its members, a sizable portion of which ends up anyway as return-to-sender letters.
Besides, SSS now has little good news to tell its members and pensioners.
President Marcos’ political strategists were obviously influencing the voting decision of the 10.5 million SSS members who represented 40 percent of the 26.2 million registered voters then.
He won that election after garnering 10,807,197 votes in the first official canvass of the Regular Batasang Pambansa.
The same assembly, however, nullified this victory via a “people’s resolution” on March 4, 1986—barely a few days following the Edsa Revolution of Feb. 22-25, 1986. Using the tally of the National Movement for a Free Election, it declared Cory Aquino winner instead with 7,502,601 votes against the much-reduced 6,787,556 votes for President Marcos.
If that 20-percent SSS pension increase in 1986 was intended to shore up FM’s presidential candidacy, it certainly didn’t work.
Today 30 years later, it still isn’t working. Maybe it’s because we have only two million pensioners out of the 55 million registered voters.
Congressman Neri Colmenares, in particular, has successfully shepherded in both houses of Congress the passage of a bill granting a P2,000-increase in SSS pensions. This should have made him the darling of pensioners and their families.
Unfortunately, PNoy vetoed it because it was unfunded and its approval would result in the “stability of the entire SSS benefit system” being “seriously compromised.”
Met with protests from pensioners, PNoy justified his veto by insisting that the bill’s approval would immediately bankrupt SSS. He also claimed that while the increase would benefit two million pensioners, it would jeopardize the future pensions of 31 million younger members.
PNoy must have been a genius by expediently losing the two million pensioners’ votes while gaining as compensation the 31 million members’ votes.
In fact, in the senatorial surveys that the Social Weather Stations conducted in September and December last year while Rep. Colmenares was furiously campaigning for the approval of his pension increase, he still landed at the bottom of the pit among 25 candidates. Even in the January survey when pensioners were already angry with PNoy, his ranking didn’t improve a bit.
The sad reality is that voters still prefer traditional politicians who are either incumbent or returning senators. Many macho voters still choose their boxing idol Manny Pacquiao and the once-sexy Alma Moreno over pension advocate Rep. Colmenares.
PNoy has paid SSS little attention throughout his presidency. Instead, he has chosen to support the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and PhilHealth—President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s favorite social welfare programs —by providing massive government subsidies to their indigent and senior citizen beneficiaries.
Reluctantly, he is releasing this year budget crumbs to indigent senior citizens aged 65 while still excluding younger senior citizens who have been waiting since 2010 for that legislated P500 social pension.
He had Congress set aside P115.2 billion for these programs —P62.665 billion to 4Ps for indigent families, P43.781 billion to PhilHealth for the premiums of indigents and senior citizens, and P8.711 billion for social pensions. But for SSS pensioners, he has set aside zero.
PNoy may have asked the million beneficiaries of these programs to vote for his anointed presidential candidate but not because of “utang na loob” or repayment. Neither has he nor his party mates—except for her ever-loyal social welfare secretary who had made a slip of the tongue —ever raised the threat of these programs being discontinued if his political opponents would succeed him in office.
In any case, Mayor Digong Duterte has his reasons to deny that he would discontinue them and that instead, he would improve on them.
It is now becoming clear that pension issues won’t be in the agenda of topics for debate by the presidential candidates in the next three months before Election Day on May 9.
Candidates would debate on more exciting topics about cursing the pope and kissing women, citizenship and residency, graft and corruption, incompetency and mediocrity, same-sex marriage and divorce, and other melodramatic topics.
They’d fuss about traffic jams, railways, toll roads, extreme poverty, unemployment, drugs, peace and order, and prices of education, fares, gasoline, electricity and rice.
They’d quarrel about federalism, PGMA, pork barrels, Bangsamoro Republic, Mamasapano, Chinese and American interventions, Middle East crisis and terrorism.
They’d promise passing laws on freedom of information and lower taxes.
But they’d be skirting pension issues.
We can only hope that the eventual winner would put his heart and mind into addressing them afterward.