As a “game of addition,” politics is a great way to learn one’s multiplication tables.
When Congresswoman GMA was sworn in as the new House Speaker during that unruly afternoon incident at the Sona last Monday, featuring no mace and no microphones, a total of 161 representatives had signed onto a manifesto of support for her.
When an apparently more formal election was held that evening, the number of votes counted for her went up to 184. And when she hosted a thank-you dinner at her La Vista home a couple of nights later, over 200 congressmen reportedly showed up.
Now who says democracy is dead in this country? Certainly not inside Congress, where its denizens are completely free to do as they wish.
And multiplication is still going on. House Deputy Speaker Nonoy Andaya disclosed that some congressmen who jumped ship to join PDP-Laban right after the Duterte victory in 2016 may again be jumping ship to join SGMA’s former party, Lakas-CMD. Apparently they got nowhere with their new party’s old guard.
In turn, Lakas-CMD reportedly may merge with Hugpong ng Pagbabago, the new regional (for now) party formed by my favorite future presidential candidate, Mayor Inday Sara. That would mark a great team-up between the grizzled veterans of Lakas, who go back all the way to the FVR years, and the generation of millennials who may become a force multiplier for the Mindanao newbies under Mayor Sara.
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Barely a week into her new post, Mrs Arroyo is already running into the same kind of brickbats that hounded her last few years in office as President. The most common rumor is that she’s angling to become prime minister, which would effectively make her chief executive of the country all over again.
Of course this rumor is complete nonsense, because the draft constitution prepared by Duterte’s consultative committee wants to retain the current presidential system, not shift to parliamentary. Any prime ministership is thus nothing but a fictional position that resides entirely between the ears of a brain-dead opposition.
But at least the congressional chamber that Arroyo heads is still alive and kicking. We can’t say the same for the Senate, which appears to have given up its testicular sacs and succumbed to the disease of “survey-itis”: Doing only what opinion surveys say they should do.
According to Senate majority leader Migz Zubiri, not one of his colleagues is willing to sponsor the TRAIN-2 tax reform bill. Among the ostensible reasons: Higher inflation and the administration’s failure to implement social safety nets under TRAIN-1, and the risk of businesses leaving the country if investment incentives are removed by TRAIN-2.
These guys don’t have our sympathy. Using any shortcomings in the first bill to justify lack of support for the second bill is a painfully obvious piece of ad hominem reasoning. And dodging the issue of fiscal incentives, instead of manning up to fix what may need fixing in the second bill, is just plain cravenness.
Zubiri added that only four senators support federalism: himself, Senators Koko Pimentel and Manny Pacquiao, and Senate President Tito Sotto. And here we were thinking that the President’s allies constitute the majority, with all the perks that allies get to enjoy.
At least, on the controversial issues of “no-el” and term extensions, the majority senators happen to agree with the House Speaker. That should put an end to those harebrained ideas that were hatched by purely personal hidden agendas.
And in case of a constituent assembly being called, the senators are unanimously behind joint but separate voting. In the end, institutional self-interest can always be relied upon to get those testicular sacs up and flowing.
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Amidst all the politicians’ antics, it’s fair to say that the Duterte administration still has its nose firmly pressed to the grindstone.
National Economic and Development Authority Secretary Ernie Pernia expects to finish 43 out of a total of 75 flagship priority infrastructure projects within the next two years. Six of them are already under construction, with one actually finished already. Pernia described his number as a “good batting average,” and we can only pray that he’ll hit all those runs, one single after another.
The Neda head added that under the current five-year public investment plan (PIP), ARMM will be getting a total of 1,340 infrastructure projects, or nearly 30 percent of all projects. With ARMM posting the lowest gross regional domestic product today, that works out to a level of public investment being equal to 17.5 percent—higher than the 4.2 percent in NCR, or the national average of under 6.3 percent.
As and if implemented, those projects will be a great boon, not only to the Bangsamoro, but also to the rest of the country. With the ratification of the new Bangsamoro Organic Law, economic development must follow quickly, if we want our Muslim brethren to use their new autonomy wisely by staying within the fold of the Republic.
And on the jobs side, Deputy Speaker Andaya has announced the holding of the largest-ever jobs fair in the country’s history. Starting next year, government wants to hire 130,000 new teachers, policemen, firemen and jail guards, at an additional budget of P27.6 billion.
The focus will be on hiring “highly skilled professionals in technical positions” to close the “technical deficit” that has clogged the pipeline of new infrastructure projects. We assume that the jobs fair will include programs to lure back our highly skilled workers abroad, who I’m told are willing to come home for something like 70 percent of what they’re being paid now.
And even if the jobs fair succeeds, some 270,000 positions will still be unfilled out of a total authorized of 1.83 million. Clearly, the time may have come for government to seriously look into rightsizing, not just upsizing, its collective plantilla.
Repetitive operations with addends can always be converted into the simplicity of multiplicands, provided the right multiplier is found.
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