Philippine Presidential Spokesperson Claire Castro claimed on Thursday that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is “very nearly finished” writing his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) to be delivered before a joint session of Congress of Monday, July 27.
Castro’s boast is seen as overstated. While it is Marcos’ lookout to approve the entirety of his speeches, presidents do not write such long and complicated addresses. They have an army of speechwriters tasked to craft portions of these from reports of various government agencies and officials.
Desperation speech
Marcos’ SONA on Monday may need to contain more positive spin than usual: a trumpeting of his government’s supposed achievements in the past year.
The Philippine president had been deflecting the biggest corruption scandal the Philippines has ever seen that Marcos himself set in motion in his last SONA when he blurted “Have some shame!” to fellow politicians in attendance, most of whom were his allies. Some of those who were eventually investigated for anomalous billion pesos flood control projects revealed they did it with the president’s full knowledge and participation. Marcos denies the allegations.
The Philippine government was also rocked by one of the biggest political infighting in its troubled history. Vice President Sara Duterte had been impeached by the Marcos-dominated House of Representatives while the impeachment complaints against him were perfunctorily dismissed. Duterte is now being tried by the Philippine Senate whose guilty verdict would effectively eliminate her from the next presidential elections in 2028.
The corruption scandal and Marcos’ bitter quarrel with his vice president has polarized the country, with both camps accusing each other of corruption.
Middle East war woes
The Philippines had been hit especially hard by the war in the Middle East, causing record-level inflation, fuel price increases, unemployment, soaring electricity rates and unprecedented currency value dives in the last six months.
Pump prices of diesel have jumped by 55%, gasoline by 66%, kerosene by 97%, and LPG by 40-50%. It has the second-highest pump price of gasoline and the third-highest pump price of diesel in the region. Despite being given special powers to suspend taxes to stabilize prices, Marcos refused to do so, saying his government needs the tax proceeds for social services such as cash incentives to sectors most affected by the war.
Meanwhile, electricity rates have increased by around 22%, with overall electricity inflation climbing to 12% year-on-year in June, the highest in three years. Nationwide, the Philippines’ average power rate had become the most expensive in Southeast Asia.
Greater poverty
Marcos made much of World Bank’s classification of the Philippines as an “upper middle-income” economy last July 1. He said the world has noticed his government’s efforts and more investments and jobs will soon start coming in.
Social indicators, however, show Filipinos are increasingly suffering economically under his government. The national average daily cost of living has climbed to P1,305, nearly double the minimum wage even in the country’s capital and more than thrice in the poorest Muslim Mindanao region.
Jobless workers swelled by 440,000 in the past year, including the nearly 10,000 overseas Filipino workers who lost their jobs in the Middle East because of the war.
A Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey indicated the number of Filipinos who consider themselves poor ballooned by around 3.2 million in the past year. Similarly, the number of people who experienced involuntary hunger jumped by 2.1 million during the same period.
People’s protests
Tens of thousands of protesters have announced massive rallies throughout the Philippines to coincide with Marcos’ SONA. The main protest centre would be along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City, adjacent to where Marcos would be delivering his annual report to the nation.
The local governments of Quezon City and Manila have already declared class suspensions in anticipation of traffic gridlocks on Monday.
Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) will again lead their annual “People’s SONA,” to denounce corruption, human rights violations, and economic hardships under the Marcos government. “Clearly, one of the legacies of the Marcos presidency is not making the Philippines more developed as an economy, which it desperately tries to depict with its delusional upper-middle-income status, but rather causing greater destitution and more suffering among the Filipino people,” BAYAN said in a press briefing on Friday.
The alliance said they will expose the deception that Marcos is sure to peddle about the Philippine economy and make him accountable for the worsening misery of Filipinos. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)