We hoped—as we were constantly promised during the campaign period—that real change would come immediately if then-Mayor Digong Duterte would be elected president.
Thus, we expected much more beyond the eradication of illegal drugs, criminality, and graft and corruption in government during the first 100 days of his presidency.
President Digong didn’t disappoint us when he issued his first executive order. Not only was it signed immediately after he assumed the presidency on June 30, his executive order also placed under the supervision of his Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr. a dozen government agencies that are engaged in the eradication of poverty in the country.
These agencies—National Anti-Poverty Commission, National Food Authority, Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, Cooperative Development Authority, National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, National Commission on Muslim Filipinos, National Youth Commission, Office of the President-Presidential Action Center, Philippine Commission on Women, Philippine Coconut Authority, Presidential Commission on Urban Poor, and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority—used to perform their mandates almost independently of each other with minimal supervision from any Cabinet secretary.
But in his executive order, President Digong directed them to “formulate a more responsive set of programs complementing existing ones, channeling resources as necessary to reduce both the incidence and magnitude of poverty” under the supervision of Secretary Evasco.
We find this reorganization bold and revolutionary. We even thought that by assigning to Secretary Evasco the lead role in accomplishing what should be his administration’s centerpiece program, President Digong has made a super-secretary out of the former priest, rebel and mayor of Maribojoc, Bohol.
Moreover, Secretary Evasco was bestowed the supervision of NAPC, HUDCC, NCMF and TESD, which are presently headed by Cabinet-level ranked officials.
In reality, this supervision is more of a ceremonial type of authority to coordinate our anti-poverty activities. For instance, who wouldn’t be stymied in supervising HUDCC, which is now chaired by Vice President Leni Robredo?
In other words, we should not expect significant changes to immediately come from our anti-poverty efforts.
A hundred days after President Digong’s arrival in Malacañang, we should realize again that real change would only come gradually—oftentimes evolutionary and rarely suddenly.
In fact, before President Duterte could implement the changes that he wants in health, education, social welfare, labor, transportation, federalism and other areas, he has to get first Congressional approval of his proposed 2017 national budget of P3.35 trillion, which he has called “a budget for real change.”
But his proposed budget increases by only 11.6 percent that of the current year. We thus could only expect modest changes to come out of this “coasting along” annual operating budget.
His administration cannot even formulate its own long-term vision for the country, particularly on poverty.
Perhaps for want of anything to show, he issued Executive Order 5 last October 11—103 days after he assumed office —and thereby adopted as our long-term national vision in the next 25 years “AmBisyon Natin 2040” –
“By 2040, the Philippines shall be a prosperous, predominantly middle-class society where no one is poor; our people shall live long and healthy lives, be smart and innovative, and shall live in a high-trust society.”
In fact, AmBisyon could be considered as President Benigno Aquino III’s legacy to us. As openly disclosed by the National Economic and Development Authority, AmBisyon is the summary of a few nationwide public consultations and a single survey that was conducted during PNoy’s last days in office.
According to its findings, most Filipinos aspire for a simple and comfortable middle-class lifestyle—“earning enough, educating all children until college, owning a car, owning a medium-sized house, finding time to relax with family and friends, owning a business, and being able to travel around the country.”
It is not even an implementation plan, yet it is requiring President Digong and the next three presidents to craft their Philippine Development Plans in order to “triple real per capita incomes and eradicate hunger and poverty by 2040, if not sooner.”
Even if these ambitious goals were met, year 2040 is 25 years away. Meantime, what would we have?
For us pensioners, AmBisyon is very hazy on what we’ll get in the next months and at the end of President Digong’s term six years from now.
And while we had persistently pleaded PNoy—rudely, most of the time in the past one year—to instruct the Social Security System to grant us a long-overdue P2,000 pension increase, we still have nothing after 100 days of Mayor Digong’s presidency.
The immediate change that we hoped would come via a pension increase still hangs for lack of funds despite renewed Congressional approvals.
We have suggested the American system of periodically adjusting pensions, but this has been spurned.
Perhaps President Digong and his chosen Cabinet secretaries had found in their trips to Indonesia, Vietnam, and China a more suitable Asian way of adjusting pensions. Else, they should try searching for it in Japan later.
We won’t mind waiting further for our pension adjustments to come slowly and gradually, but will someone please assure us that they’d eventually come?