GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc, The Philippine Star, Monday, July 28, 2008
Filipinos rated Gloria Arroyo’s performance negative-38 percent in June, much worse than her negative-26 in March. Three of every five (60 percent) were dissatisfied with her; only one in five (22 percent) cheered. She’s now decidedly the most disliked President since Marcos. That’s in spite of her crisis doles: discounted rice at P18.50 a kilo, P500 per family that burns less than 50 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month, another P500 per family that’s certified poor, still another P500 per needy senior citizen, discounted diesel, subsidized fertilizer, and whatever else gimmick.
Remnant loyalists claim that Arroyo’s popularity sagged due to price surges of rice and fuel. The implication is that outside forces beyond her control — OPEC cartel, Chinese-Indian food and fuel demand — marred her.
They’re wrong. Arroyo got failing marks because of broken public trust. Why, 40 percent expect her to lie through the teeth again today in her State of the Nation. Only 14 percent are giving her the benefit of the doubt in her annual report and initiatives. This credibility rating is again worse than last year’s 29 percent who anticipated her to fib, and statistically the same as the 13 percent who had hoped she wouldn’t.
If government were parliamentary, Arroyo’s admin would likely be dissolved by now in a no-confidence vote. Sadly it’s presidential, with not only a fixed term but also virtual control over the House of Reps’ purse. So the pliant congressmen will fete her today in a Batasan spruced up at the cost of P90 million, with P110 million more to come — from her. On top of that, they’ll be splurging millions more on decor, food and wine, fuel for the motorcade of sycophants to her speech, and mobilization of cops to keep citizens away.
All that money will be wasted. If Filipinos will listen to her address at all, it is only to prepare to refute her, They know she will skirt the real issues:
• Her involvement, and that of her kith and kin, in multibillion-peso scams in ZTE, Northrail, Southrail, Transco, fertilizers, swine, coal imports, telecom frequencies, oil exploration, smuggling, and more;
• Her breach of procedures and laws, first to rig the 2004 presidential polls and then cover it up; and
• Her silence over, or tacit consent to, the murder of 56 journalists and more than 800 militant dissenters by roving death squads.
* * *
On the road to the Batasan, take note of Metro Manila Development Authority chairman Bayani Fernando’s work. Many call it madness.
Commonwealth Avenue is supposed to be the country’s widest, with eight lanes on each side, and sidewalks and a median with shady trees and flowering shrubs. The shades and flowers have been ditched. BF spent the money instead to cut three-lane U-turns where unneeded. This constricted the national road not to five lanes but only three, because adjacent to the U-turn slots are BF’s pink-colored, fenced-off jeepney stops.
The outermost of three U-turn lanes have been eliminated, cemented with shin-high perimeters. They’re unnecessary anyway, according to BF, because U-turning jeepneys and buses need to eat into the second or third lane. Engineer BF forgets that the extra-wide turning radius is because the old vehicles from Japan are unsafe because retrofitted with inapt gearboxes. His job as metropolitan chief is to weed out such rolling coffins.
The dead lanes have been gathering rainwater, breeding ponds for dengue mosquitoes. BF had a swift solution. He ordered gravel and soil poured in. If talk was true, he might have spent last weekend prettifying the mess with greens for today’s SONA, but later will just cement them all over.
BF justifies his U-turn slots as necessary traffic chokers. Because Commonwealth is so wide, drivers tend to over-speed; at least one pedestrian or motorist is killed everyday, more maimed. BF’s ingenious answer was the hazardous cemented barriers astride fenced jeepney lanes. Cars must now suddenly swerve or screech to rolling stops. The last time people heard, the sane engineering solutions would have been to paint lane markers, build more pedestrian overpasses, and arrest speedsters.
The public works office spent P800 million to widen Commonwealth, Rep. Roilo Golez laments, only to have BF destroy it. USec. Ramon Aquino swore they never gave BF permission to pave the U-turn slots, yet he did anyway. The House oversight committee is girding to condemn him for it and similar damage on Ninoy Aquino Road fronting Manila International Airport in Parañaque.
“We heard that BF has told off the MRT builders on Commonwealth to not touch his U-turn slots,” Golez says. “Designs had to be redrawn and additional costs will be incurred, just to preserve his folly.”
* * *
