The 3Ps or public-private partnerships is a program for building public infrastructures in which government agencies, without spending public funds, initiate projects with private sector partners that are guaranteed recovery of their investments from direct users of their completed project.
It was supposed to play a major role in PNoy’s administration, but for various reasons, it had not delivered in the past 5-1/2 years except for a non-essential connecting road from Cavite to South Luzon Expressway.
Admittedly, we are almost clueless about this program of PNoy. Maybe, other projects have been completed using it but certainly, there weren’t enough publicity about them.
We don’t even know who heads the program.
Is that incomplete elevated road infrastructure at the Pasay airport part of PNoy’s 3Ps program? It surely showcased how differently we do things here in the Philippines for full viewing this week of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation delegates.
We are constantly told to make sacrifices by going through inconveniences now in order to reap the fruits of development and progress later. But must we endure hellish traffic conditions for months while this new road is being constructed?
In any case, wasn’t it constructed to please primarily the casino tourists when they proceed from the airport to the emerging casino city by the bay?
We can only wish that constructions are done with minimal inconvenience similar to how the elevated light railway transit system over Edsa was built during the administration of President Fidel Ramos.
The 4Ps or “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program” is how the PNoy administration now refers to its conditional cash transfer program that doles out a maximum of P1,400 to poor families who have satisfied its conditions for award.
In fact, it was the Arroyo administration that first piloted this program using borrowed funds from the World Bank. The bank believed that the country’s growing poverty could be alleviated through direct governmental intervention such as the CCT that—it claimed—was being implemented successfully in Latin American countries.
The PNoy administration—assuming full accountability for the program—continued and expanded it to be its cornerstone social welfare program.
Seldom is publicly mentioned about Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Juliano Soliman being a daughter of a Hacienda Luisita “capataz.” But to her credit, she has been the program’s untiring administrator who has made it such a significant anti-poverty program that it had been allocated a budget of P62.7 billion for 4.6 million families in 2016 despite remaining devoid of legislation and being a regular subject of public criticism.
Moreover, the homeless poor have remained visibly plenty that they had to be hidden from public view during this week of the Apec Leaders’ Meeting.
We have also the 5Ps of Success.
Usually 5Ps stands for proper planning prevents poor performance, but my senior citizen friends have sarcastically used it to describe the PNoy administration’s performance in the past 5-1/2 years and in this week of the Apec meeting—“palpak” planning produces poor performance.
Maybe, PNoy had plans about implementing his “Daang Matuwid” policy when he assumed the presidency in 2010. Maybe, he also knew that “he who fails to plan, plans to fail.”
He must have had detailed and personalized plans because without them, how could he have succeeded in systematically bringing down to public shame ex-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, and Chief Justice Renato Corona? After all, they were the three highest officials of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government before his administration.
Never mind that they are still unconvicted and could eventually be declared innocent. What is important for now is that they have been shamed publicly for corruption charges. Besides, haven’t they caused him and his family great pains in the past?
Didn’t he brag about this accomplishment before Apec leaders?
We are hosting the 2015 Apec Leaders’ Meeting almost 20 years after we hosted it in 1996. While we cannot fully assess the far-reaching outcomes of that hosting, certainly the delegates were happy about their accommodations and our people were proud of being hosts then.
But in this year’s meeting, why wasn’t any important role given to President Ramos who hosted that very successful meeting?
Instead, PNoy appointed as early as Nov. 28, 2012 his invisible executive secretary as chairman and former Consul General to San Francisco and Ambassador Marciano Paynor as director general of the national organizing committee.
A protocol expert, the director general—as if anticipating a fiasco event—declared last week that PNoy is “on top of everything and directed the organizing council to ensure that the country’s hosting will be a success from all points of view.”
There is no doubt that PNoy is fully responsible for our hosting of this year’s Apec Leaders’ Meeting.
Perhaps, there was indeed much that we have gained politically and economically from this hosting and only a few thousands have been inconvenienced by the road reroutings and only a hundred businessmen have lost their usual cash flows.
But clearly, we have been made to pay unnecessary a high price for this year’s hosting because of “palpak” planning.
