The morning after Election Day, the Filipino people are going to wake up to find a whole pile of motherhood statements that Miriam Defensor Santiago, Mar Roxas, Rodrigo Duterte, Grace Poe and Jejomar Binay have made during the course of the Presidential campaign but they will not find the program of government complete with specific details of how each of the candidates intends to deal with many important problems—political, economic, social and diplomatic—facing this country. Motherhood is good, but specifics are better.
The revival by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) of the Presidential-debates series was a big step in the right direction, making possible, as it did, the statement by the candidates—in debate style—their respective views on the issues comprising the nation’s agenda. An excellent next step for the Comelec to take, for the 2019 and 2022 elections, would be for each of the candidates to submit, for dissemination among the electorate, a paper outlining his or her position on key national issues and the specific actions he or she intends to take in furtherance of that position. The specificity to which such a paper—call it a white paper—will give rise will have the effect of making the Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates more focused and substantive.
Truth to tell, with only a few exceptions, the five Presidential and six Vice-Presidential candidates have yet to offer specific ideas on a number of critically important issues confronting the nation. These areas include tax reform, energy policy and climate change, mining policy, environmental protection, agricultural productivity in the coming days. Nor has any of them put forward a program for strengthening the nascent move toward renewable sources of energy.
All of the candidates have been paying abundant lip service to strengthening agriculture, providing support for productivity enhancement and raising farm incomes. But not one of them has laid out a coherent and detailed program for bringing about the desiderata. Everyone knows, or should know, that the rain-dependent character of Philippine agriculture makes a network of functioning irrigation canals vital to the productivity of Philippine farms. But none of the candidates had much to say about irrigation. One of them even seemed to have trouble pronouncing the word.
The Presidential candidates should know that every credible assessment of this country’s economic prospects points to infrastructure deficiency as one of the principal deterrents to a stronger inflow of FDI (foreign direct investment) into this country. But the candidates have not gone behind making vague statements about the virtues of FDI and its impact on the GDP (gross domestic product). Neither Poe nor Roxas nor Duterte nor Santiago nor Binay has indicated how he/she intends to do things differently, FDI-wise, if he or she were elected on May 9. Unless specific changes are effected in this country’s approach to FDI attraction, the Presidential-debate dialogue will be the same in the run-up to the 2022 election.
Access by the lower-income groups to public tertiary education surely is one of the indicators of inclusive economic growth. More than that, greater access to the SUC (State universities and colleges) by students from lower-income families is assuredly one of the keys to the stability and strengthening of Philippine democracy. But beyond motherhood statements about the need for a strong SUC sector, none of the Presidential candidates has stated out in detail his or her approach to meeting the financial requirements of the University of the Philippines system, PUP (Polytechnic University of the Philippines) and the dozens of struggling and grossly under-financed provincial universities and colleges.
The Presidential candidates obviously believe that Filipino voters who attend their campaign sorties will allow them to get away with simply making motherhood statements. Not all voters feel that way, though. Many want specifics and details so that they can make truly informed choices.
This brings me back to the suggestion I made at the outset of this column. After the Presidential debates series, Comelec’s next logical election enhancement step should be requiring the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates in 2022—even the Senatorial candidates in 2019—to submit, for dissemination among the voters, a paper containing specifics for dealing with the most important urgent issues facing the nation.
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