Speaker Sonny Belmonte is showing an independence streak that must be upsetting his party mates and fellow leaders of the Liberal Party. An original Cory supporter and a colleague of the late Ninoy Aquino when they were both young journalists, Belmonte is actually the most experienced and most trained in governance among the LP leaders. Belmonte knows what hes talking about. He could see it in the number of poor Filipinos, unable to emerge from the quagmire of poverty that had gripped generations before them. What is probably most galling for him is that instead of backing his own proposal to amend the Constitution so that foreign capital could flow in and promote more competition that could generate jobs and more economic activity, the Palace instead belatedly announced a silly proposal to extend the term of President Aquino simply because, as a Rappler article quoted an anonymous Palace source, to mislead the camp of Vice-President Jojo Binay and take the heat off the campaign of Mar Roxas, who has not been performing too well in two subsequent presidential surveys. In other words, Belmonte must have been so pissed off by the apparent lack of respect for a political position he had taken as leader of an independent branch of the government that he must have started thinking it was time to show the brass who has got the balls. Is it true that inclusive growth is nothing more than a mere spin word at the moment? Yes, and figures wont lie, as the vast majority of poor Filipinos remain poor for more than three or four generations already. In other words, while some have risen out of poverty to join the overburdened middle class, many of these returned to poverty as the cyclical economic boom and bust season in the Philippines ate up whatever gains they may have had under previous administrations. This is shown by the urgency in the governments proposal to raise more the budget of its conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, a system designed in Latin America as a form of State intervention to address long-term poverty kong its population. Over 4 million Filipinos now receive P1,400 a month from the government, similar to the cash dole outs given to African Americans as part of the New Deal under President Johnson, up from over a million only during the time of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, whose frustration over the huge poverty levels during her presidency made her embrace the social intervention program as a means to jumpstart efforts to reduce the number of poor Filipinos. Despite this intervention, however, we have not seen a reduction in the number of poor Filipinos. Indeed, we may see the numbers rising as the incidence of unwanted and repeated teenage pregnancy increase among the poor, thus raising the prospects of generations and generations of Filipinos inheriting the poverty of their forefathers. Maybe, Speaker Belmonte should seriously think about running for President and challenging the younger Roxas for the LPs nomination. I am not saying he has a serious chance of becoming President -- Speaker Joe de Venecias experience had made it a sad reality that House Speakers usually become victims of political mudslinging, an experience that Bemonte rarely experienced when he headed the House twice -- but it may energize the debate on policy within the LP, instead of the stagnant inclusive growth mantra that had made its own leaders and followers believe the propaganda that their mandate was only to clean up government -- a failure -- and forgot that running the government and the economy were included, too, when they raised their right hand and swore to serve and protect the Republic. newsinfo.inquirer.net/641283/belmonte-agrees-with-party-list-group-on-lack-of-inclusive-growth
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 00:40:49 +0000
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