SINTO-SINTONG GOBYERNO

Delusional government

By Manila Standard Today | Posted on Apr. 29, 2013 at 12:01am | 116 views

IT was embarrassing to listen to President Aquino badmouth members of his own economic team last week simply because they reported that poverty had remained unchanged since 2006.
The statistics, released every three years by the National Statistical Coordination Board, showed that 28 out of 100 Filipinos still lived in poverty as of 2012, much as they did in 2006. While the numbers were reported without comment, they clearly suggested what Mr. Aquino was loathe to admit. Nothing he did in his first two years in office put a dent in the war on poverty, and the billions he had squandered on his so-called 4Ps program, a straight dole to the “poorest of the poor” families, had accomplished nothing that was statistically significant.
On this basis, the President called into question the veracity of the statistics and even the motives of the bureaucrats in his government that collated them. Pointing to an unrelated statistical error that was reported by a completely different agency of government, he cast doubts on the NSCB for sharing an inconvenient truth with the public.
The behavior is sadly typical of an administration that has mastered the art of cherry-picking figures that put it in a good light and dismissing or even discrediting data that lifts the curtain on its failures. The offshoot of this practice is that it leads to a false sense of accomplishment and provides a poor basis for sound policy making.
For the last three years, we have had to listen to Mr. Aquino blame his predecessor for all the country’s woes, and paint a rosy picture of change under his administration in his annual State of the Nation Address. But we now know from experience that what Mr. Aquino says often bears little resemblance to the unadorned truth.
Last year, for example, he boasted that disaster response under his administration was so good that “relief goods are ready even before a storm arrives.” It isn’t farfetched to believe that Mr. Aquino’s complacency and confidence contributed to the social disaster that followed in Davao, where starving farmers, victims of a powerful typhoon, stormed a government warehouse in February after the Department of Social Welfare and Development had failed to keep its promise to distribute sacks of rice to them to stave off hunger. Confronted with her failure to do her job, the Cabinet member responsible simply turned the tables on the typhoon victims, calling them “agitators” and threatening to charge them in court.
In the same State of the Nation Address last year, the President boasted that the agrarian reform program that his mother had begun during her term would finally see fruition under his guidance. The inconvenient truth: one full year after the Supreme Court ordered Mr. Aquino’s family to distribute its Hacienda Luisita sugar estate to tenant farmers, not a single square meter of farmland has changed hands.
Mr. Aquino’s love of the positive also colors his relationship with the press, whom he has constantly chided to focus on good news and to “avoid negativism” – which is fast becoming an administration mantra.
United States President Barack Obama, whom Mr. Aquino likes to style himself after, offered a contrasting view at a recent dinner for the press. “My job is to be the president, your job is to keep me humble,” he told the roomful of journalists.
On the other hand, Mr. Aquino insists that the role of media is to make him look good, whether he deserves it or not.