Reading about the Philippine president’s State of the Nation Address or SONA will make people realize especially the international community that the Philippines and its leader is serious about cutting down the abuse of authority of its government officials. One thing that I am very much interested with in relation to my area of interest is Politics and prevailing common policies. The state of the nation address is like a general status report of the president to its people regarding the things that the government has accomplished within the year of office as well as future initiatives. In the SONA, the issue of corruption and abuse of authority is well addressed in the speech, being it as one of them main objective of the Philippine government to reduce incidents of corruption. Corruption is present not only in the Philippines, but as well as in some countries, the same reason why a lot of nations in the world are having problems when it comes to good governance and economic growth. When a public official is not fulfilling his duties and is using his position for his own interest, it is likely that the people would not be able to obtain the satisfactory rate of public service which in return creates social depression.
What’s unique about the Philippines as compared to the United States is its government system. The United States is following a Federal system while the Philippines generally a Republic country. In Federal system it has a central government which is provided with specified powers over a union of state governments (What is a Federal System? Web, 2011). While in Republic government, the power remains to the sovereign state and its people, they have a particular degree of impact to the government and people’s freedom includes speaking openly about their opinions (Cinco, Web, 2011).
Since the Philippines exercises freedom of speech, especially when it comes to criticizing their public officials about how well or bad their officials are doing in their jobs, those officials would make sure that they are behaving good knowing that the public is at close watch. Going back to the SONA and the issue of addressing corruption in the Philippines, foreign visitors could expect a lot when it comes to public service. For an instance foreign visitors can expect better services at the airport and faster public document processing.
State of the Nation Address is a place of gathering for all public officials; because this is when the President will be delivering his accomplishment reports. The public is also welcome to attend this event so as the foreign dignitaries and visitors on certain conditions. The benefits of attending a SONA is for everyone to understand the direction the country is going to and for the citizens and international community to realize if there is a clear indication of progress going forward. This will determine the confidence of foreign investors if it is viable to invest money to the Philippines upon knowing that the Philippine president is serious about practicing good governance.
There is no surprise that such event is being held in the Philippines because this is also being done in other countries such as the United States, but they call it as State of the Union Address which is also being delivered annually at the United States Congress. It is important that the people are well informed of the country’s political and economic development and it would set the people’s expectations of what will happen going forward.
Philippine Government to Allocate CCT Funds for the Poor
The Philippine government recently decided to allocate PHP 306 billion or approximately $706 million of funds as monetary aid for the poor. The program is called Conditional Cash Transfer that aims to help the poor families in their everyday expenses for a span of five years. This is through the initiatives of Party-List Congressman Teddy Casiño who proposed the program during the Department and Social Welfare and Development budget hearing. According to the congressman, there are approximately 4.6 million poor families across the country that will be given PHP 13,000 worth of monetary assistance annually starting 2012 until 2016.
What is I have learned about this news in relation to my political and common law interests is that budget allocations have to be redefined by the law. Given that there are about 4.6 million poor families in the Philippines, the country’s constitution should have a clear definition of fund allocations for the less fortunate. If there is a clear priority for families belonging to the poor, fund allocations shouldn’t have to wait to be initiated from any concerned officials but it should rather be mandated by the law. Because what if these social issues were overlooked, then these poor families will not have any hope for assistance at all.
This program is similar to what the United States did back in 2008 when the country suffered great economic distress because of recession. The United States proposed action for distributing food stamps to help those who are greatly affected by the economic problem. What’s unique from what the Philippines did is that they are sending cash on a yearly basis to the poor families in a form of ATM cards. But the thing is this program is not supported by a strong law provision.
The real benefits in this development is not for anybody else but for the poor, there is a chain reaction to this positive political initiative, wherein the poor families will have the opportunity to live a more descent life that there is no need for them to scrape too much just to get by on their everyday needs. The only benefit that we all can get here is we can learn to be more concerned as a citizen not in terms of money but to be a champion of the poor and make us think of different ways to help them.
It is surprising to know this program was introduced just recently, why it was being implemented before. Given that the social situation reveals a great number of poor families in the Philippines, the government should have established the same if not similar program before. It goes to show that law makers were not able to address the issues about the needs of poor Filipinos in the past their number had almost reached double in the past 20 years. Despite of the political unrest in the Philippines where a lot of issues are being thrown back and forth to its leaders, the people on the other hand forgets that there are other things that need an immediate attention. That includes providing a better social welfare program that will uplift the status of many suffering families. Appropriations is one of the problems of the Philippine government, they should have set clear policies on how to lessen the population of poor families by implementing similar and supporting programs for this sector of the society (Chua, Web, 2011).
Senators Seeking Support for Reproductive Health Bill from Students
Philippine Senators Pia Cayetano and Miriam Santiago are working their best to convince University students to support their call for support on their proposed Reproductive Health Bill. The sensational bill talks about giving each woman a right of choice when it comes to reproductive freedom. According to the National Statistics Office of the Philippines there are about 11 Filipina women die every single day because of complications brought by pregnancy. The statistics is based from the research done by the National Demographic and Health Survey back in 2008. Because of the statistical data the two senators decided to author a bill that will give rights to women in the country to decide what will work effectively for them in trms of reproductive health.
In my political and common law interests, it is evident that the bill was authored by both senators to address the problem of over population in the Philippines. The country is well devout when it comes to their majority religion which is Catholicism. Other law makers see this as an opportunity to legalize abortion because of the freedom of choice given to all women in the country. But the authors of RH bill denounced those allegations, and reiterated that main objective of the bill is to protect woman from unwanted pregnancies through the use of prescribed contraceptives and to educate the youth about sex education. Many conservatives are against the idea of teaching kids about sex, but the two senators also mentioned that the classroom lessons about sex is will only address the negative complications brought by premarital encounters.
Thus, it will also prevent early marriage and early pregnancy. In my point of view, the issue about class room discussions of sex education is about educators deliver the information and methods of teachings they use to make the children understand the discussion in academic approach. In order for a country to maximize its resources and to provide the best possible public service it is important that the resources are well distributed and that can only be obtained when the government can control the growth of its population. Given the fact that some Filipina women are suffering the consequences of unplanned pregnancies, the government needs RH bill in order to address those problems. But of course the bill should also justify the criticism of faith and culture.
This is a uniquely authored bill because compared to the United States the reproductive rights varies from each state with provisions on abortion being legal while in the Philippines the option for reproductive choice is still not tolerated. The main beneficial factor that is evident from this news is that we women are given choices that they fell is right for them. Having such law will bring uplift the society in many aspect of social living when that happens, visiting the country would be a lot pleasant knowing that the people are well educated about their rights and confident about their well being.
It is surprising that the law makers only thought of authoring a reproductive health bill when most countries around Asia already has he similar incumbent law that’s addressing the same issue. In this modern times when the environment and social awareness is becoming significantly crucial in predicting the future of a State, it is indeed about time to make necessary decisions that will allow the people to adopt to the issues of reproduction and this is also the right time for the youth to be reminded of their part in the social development (Hisona, Web, 2011).
Poverty Line Threshold Revision Slammed Workers
The Philippines National Statistical Coordination Board or NSCB was condemned by labor groups because of their decision to lower the threshold of poverty line. The main standard of living was based on the daily income and wage level of each person, thus the calculation whether a family belongs to the below poverty line is determined by the amount set for budget on each person. Before the standard costs of living for each person is at PHP 50.00 or $1.30 a day, anything lower than that is considered living in poor condition. But recently it was lowered down to PHP 46.00 or $1.02 a day. This decision removed over a million Filipinos from the poverty line. This was greatly opposed by several labor groups because; lowering the daily cost of living would also determine the reason not to increase standard salary rates. Many Filipinos today are relying on their meager wages of $39 a day or PHP 404 plus 22 pesos for allowance adjustment. But that amount is short for a family with five members which will call for a salary raise as soon as the price of goods goes up. But to lowering down the poverty line threshold will limit the chance for any standard wage earners to cope up with daily living expenses and salary increase.
What we can learn from this news in terms of politics and common law is that poverty should be addressed by raising their means of living and not by lowering their status. It is not amenable to the poor to keep raise their status in the society by lowering the threshold if they are still scraping for their daily living. According to the news the basis of lowering the bar of poverty is by changing their usual breakfast from egg omelet with tomatoes paired with fried rice to a plain scrambled egg with boiled rice. This is a trick to justify the reason not to raise salaries because of the fact that their ability to buy food is sufficient enough because they took out the cost of the tomato for the egg breakfast. By law, anyone who are earning below the minimum wage has to be aided in terms of monetary assistance. In lowering the cost of living of the poor sector, once the population reached its critical point when the percentage of families within the poverty line reached all time high, the first initiative of the government is to raise funds to aid salary increases or provide assistance. Furthermore, generating more good paying jobs would also solve the problem of the unemployed which also contributes to the growing poor population.
What makes this decision unique is the fact that instead of addressing the issue of poverty it was addressed in an awkward fashion that lowering the cost of living will solve the issue, when obviously the price of commodities are not going anywhere but up. In the United States, the federal government always has a contingency fund allocated from the Federal Reserve in case the worse come to worst. During the economic crisis, the US government was able to address the problem and able to get back to its feet because they have funds and effective policies kept for such situations.
There is no beneficial outcome regarding this issue, because the problem still exists, it was just hidden behind statistical lies and non-feasible decisions. The same thing was done by the previous administrations in order to keep the real figures and the country’s real living condition from foreign dignitaries.
This is not surprising because as were mentioned in the article, it was done the same before, and looking at the state of the problem nothing is changed. The number of poor families is still overwhelming the living conditions of the less fortunate still have not improved (Hisona, Web, 2011).
Works Cited
Wisegeek.com. N.D. Web. What is a Federal System? Retrieved December 04, 2011 from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-federal-system.htm
Thinkquest.org. N.D. Republic. Web. Retrieved December 04, 2011 from http://library.thinkquest.org/07aug/00540/republic.html
Cinco, Jun. Benigno S. Aquino III 2nd SONA, July 25, 2011 English Transcript. 25, July 2011. Web. Philippinenewsdaily.com. Retrieved December 04, 2011 from http://www.philippinenewsdaily.com/2011/07/9114/benigno-s-aquino-iii-2nd-sona-july-25-2011-english-transcript.html
Chua, Albert. Benigno Government to allocate P306 billion for CCT fund in 5 years. 23, August 2011. Web. Philippinenewsdaily.com. Retrieved December 04, 2011 from http://www.philippinenewsdaily.com/2011/08/10162/government-to-allocate-p306-billion-for-cct-fund-in-5-years.html
Hisona, Harold. Santiago, Cayetano urged students to support RH Bill. 18, September 2011. Web. Philippinenewsdaily.com. Retrieved December 04, 2011 from http://www.philippinenewsdaily.com/2011/09/10958/santiago-cayetano-urged-students-to-support-rh-bill.html
Hisona, Harold. Workers slam lowering of poverty threshold stats, 23, October 2011. Web. Philippinenewsdaily.com. Retrieved December 04, 2011 from http://www.philippinenewsdaily.com/2011/10/12236/workers-slam-lowering-of-poverty-threshold-stats.html
