BY WENDELL VIGILIA and JOCELYN MONTEMAYOR
WHILE she described President Marcos’ first State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday as “on point and perfect,” Vice President Sara Duterte yesterday said some people were obviously overwhelmed when the Chief Executive started his speech spewing out economic figures.
“Initially, the SONA of President Marcos, I think everyone or many of those who do not understand economic numbers were overwhelmed with the numbers in the first part of the speech,” Duterte told a post-SONA briefing of the government’s economic team at Malacañang Palace.
The Vice President said she believes that was the reason “it took a long time for people to start clapping because the economic part was in the beginning, and many people really do not understand economic numbers.”
Other individuals and groups found the SONA wanting.
Labor groups said the SONA was silent on the issues of worker rights, wages, and ending the contractualization work scheme.
Former Senate minority leader Franklin Drilon said Marcos forgot to mention issues hounding the country’s justice system and rule of law.
“I wished the President tackled the state of our justice system and the rule of law. in his first State of the Nation Address. He tackled everything from COVID-19 to our failing education system to our economic recovery. However, one critical ingredient is missing: the rule of law,” Drilon said in a statement.
He said specific issues on the rule of law include unsolved crimes, red-tagging, extrajudicial killings that the Marcos administration inherited from its predecessor.
He said Marcos should remember that the Duterte administration earned criticism from various human rights groups because it did not follow the rule of law.
He said the previous administration’s war on drugs “exposed” the weakness in the country’s justice system and rule of law.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros said the SONA “lacks vision” and did not present the true state of the nation. She also said nothing was said about the fight against illegal drugs and corruption in government.
She said Marcos should have discussed his plans on addressing what ails society using surveys as basis.
“Among the top 10 issues of our countrymen are jobs and livelihood. The legislative agenda of the President should have been oriented towards how to fight inflation, how to address the high prices of commodities like… joblessness, low salaries of those who are in the micro, small and medium enterprises, hunger, and corruption,” she said in Filipino.
SONA WITH STAKEHOLDERS
Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said Marcos wants to hold a separate SONA with various stakeholders, based on information he got from two Cabinet secretaries.
He said Marcos came up with the idea during one of his recent Cabinet meetings in Malacañang.
“He wants to do another one with full Cabinet slate on stage and discuss it to the different sectors, in all industries concerned, and he wants to lay it out one by one,” Zubiri told ANC.
Zubiri defended the President for not tackling the issues of corruption and anti-illegal drugs in his first SONA.
“He said he wanted to plug the tax leakages. Tax leakages are through either inefficiency of tax collection or corruption or both,” he said.
On the war on drugs, Zubiri said each administration has its own set of priorities, adding Marcos has his own agenda which is aimed at agriculture, and sound fiscal policy, among others.
WORKERS RIGHTS
The Federation of Free Workers (FFW) said Marcos’ SONA “was generally silent on the demand of workers for a living wage and the end of contractualization. He was also silent on solving the cases of extrajudicial killings, especially of workers and trade union leaders and organizers, and the sorry state of human and trade union rights in the country.”
The Partido Manggagawa (PM) said: “Rampant contractualization of labor and violation of labor rights, including red-tagging of union leaders and organizers, were not addressed in the speech. The State of the Nation, Marcos declared, is sound. But it was deafeningly quiet on wages, endo, and full employment.”
The NAGKAISA Labor Coalition said the SONA was nothing but a “belated miting de avance speech in which Bongbong’s platform of government was finally revealed. In the speech were lists of promises that he should have discussed during his campaign but he never did.”
“There is nothing in the speech that portrays the real state of the nation. BBM’s SONA, in short, was simply a wish list of platforms that we should have heard during the election campaign,” it added.
POVERTY
Social Welfare Secretary Erwin Tulfo, at the post-SONA briefing, committed to work on Marcos’ goal to lower the poverty rate to 9 percent or a single digit by 2028.
Tulfo said the Department of Social Welfare and Development already has several programs aimed at cushioning the impact of poverty, as well as inflation, but they are also looking at more programs to help uplift the lives of the people.
He said such programs include the P500 per month subsidy for the six months for poor families to ease the impact of inflation, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino program (4Ps), the Sustainable Livelihood program; and the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis.
1M JOBS
Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma said the private sector will play a big role in job generation which is in support of the President’s goals to create more jobs.
He said the government has arrangements with some industry players from business process outsourcing and information and technology for the creation of at least a million jobs up to 2028.
Laguesma said they are also coordinating with private companies for more “green jobs” amid the threat of adverse effects of climate change, and more employment chances for students and start up companies.
Migrant Workers Secretary Susan Ople reaffirmed the President’s commitment to protect the rights of migrant workers.
Ople assured compliance with Marcos’ directive of Marcos to cut down the processing time of employment requirements and employer accreditation from three months to three weeks to a month.
She said will pursue a separate agreement with the government of Saudi Arabia that would protect the rights and promote the welfare of Filipino skilled workers, and another for Filipino domestic workers two would be deployed in the Arab country.
She urged the business and diplomatic community to also help in providing returning overseas workers with local employment and local corporate social responsibility collaborations, among others.
HEALTH
Health officer in charge Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the Department of Health fully supports Marcos’ pronouncement that that there will no longer be any COVID-19-related lockdowns.
Vergeire said the goal is to keep the cases down and the hospitalization rate at a minimum which is what is already happening.
She said that while there is an increase in COVID cases now, the numbers are still low and hospitalization rate is low except in areas where there is low hospital bed allocation for COVID patients.
She said DOH also wants to ensure sustained and dynamic service through the institution of a telemedicine service to decongest hospitals and reach more people in remote areas.
Also part of the DOH goals is to improve and have adequate facilities to address the health needs of the public.
Citing a joint study of the DOH and the Asian Development Bank, she said their goal is to enable a patient to have access to a hospital within 30 minutes and a hospital bed within an hour.
Vergeire said the country needs to address a gap of 3,000 primary hospitals and 400,000 hospital beds. She said DOH’ goal is also to have 319 specialty hospitals all over the country by 2025 and 30 public health laboratories around the country by 2030. — With Gerard Naval and Raymond Africa
