Manila Standard Today #Plumbline of the week: "Run-up to the Sona" By Pastor Apollo C. Quiboloy The reportage on the run-up to the State of the Nation Address is becoming too formulaic. There’s the barrage of traffic advisories, the de rigueur mass calisthenics of anti-riot cops. Up in the Batasan, there’s the footage of the spruced-up grounds, and downtown , of militants applying finishing touches on the effigies that will be burned . Why, even bomb-sniffing dogs are having their 15 seconds of fame. And because the Sona is the fashion Olympics of the year , I won’t be surprised at all if some socialite will invite a TV crew into her boudoir to show the gown she’ll be wearing when she sashays down the fashion runway that is the Batasan red carpet . The Palace, meanwhile, is maintaining radio silence on what the SONA will contain. Mum’s the word. But the dead air is being filled with crystal ball forecast from the legislative gallery on what it would contain. * * * I hope that when the President mounts the rostrum this afternoon, focus will shift on the substance of his report and no longer on sartorial style of his perfumed audience. A Sona is part looking back, part looking forward. As a friend told me, a Sona is a one-man play of two acts. First, is the sa una part, which will dwell on the what went before, which will then segue to the sana portion, on what will be done next. And knowing the President’s penchant for brutal candor, I am sure that his speech will not just be one part “Wish Ko Lang”, but would feature “What Went Wrong” snippets on why some programs faltered or failed. A Sona is not merely an accounting of what the government did during the time the earth took one revolution around the sun. It is for this reason that when the President reads his speech from the Teleprompter this afternoon , he shouldn’t treat it as a rear-view mirror but more of a high-definition screen that shows the road ahead. * * * Only by imagining the future and projecting it with clarity to his fellow citizens, will he be able to transform his Sona into a pep rally for the country, one that will lift up the spirits of the people and boost their morale. But oratorical flourish alone does not make a great motivational speech. There are more than theatrics that will move this nation to a common goal. People would still rate a speech not by the pitch-perfect cadences it was delivered, but by the calls and the challenges it contained. Immune to rhetoric, they’d choose the message over the medium. This is probably why many are pinning so much on the Sona. The expectation is that there will be something for everybody in that speech. But unless he speaks at 3,000 words per minute and we have a listening comprehension that matches that speed, it would be impossible for the President to compress the nation’s aspiration in an hour-long speech. The fact is the Sona is not an audio Official Gazette that will fire off one fiscal year’s worth of general instructions to the bureaucracy. Neither it is an almanac of solutions to our woes. It is not an encyclopedia of answers to all our problems. Yet, many are of the opinion that the Sona must be a veritable alphabet soup of forthcoming programs that will be spoon fed to us. They want the Sona to touch on all our problems from A to Z. With the breadth and depth of our troubles, it can never be. * * * However, the President can rightfully claim bragging rights on many things which have improved . He has nearly licked the classroom-books-teachers shortage. The Philippine National Police is no longer one gunless force. Same with the military with its new hardware, never mind if some are US hand-me-downs but they are better than literally phantom jets. There are no food shortages, thanks to Procy Alcala’s tireless hands-on stewardship at the DA. There is great leap forward on universal health coverage. Headline inflation is under 3 percent. GDP grew by 7.8 percent in the last quarter. But the good news there is that manufacturing was up 9.7 percent in May from the previous month. This in turn led industry to create a quarter -million jobs in one year and the number of underemployed has been shaved. Government has also ramped up spending on infrastructure although the biggest challenge remains the unknotting of Manila’s traffic gridlock by putting more coaches on rail tracks and by lengthening the latter As to corruption, there is no stink emitting from the President’s offices. There are allegations against some subalterns but the President has remained Mr. Clean. As to the pork barrel scandal, people expect him to use his political capital in finally declaring a pork holiday. * * * When the President mounts the Batasan rostrum at 4 this afternoon and proceeds to account for the year that passed, fact-checkers will be busy verifying his claims. I recall a friend telling me that he validates the Sona with the reality pervading within the 1,000 meter radius of the Batasan. He said that if what is being told inside the cavernous hall rings true among residents of the four biggest barangays in the country, then what is being recited is really the state of the nation. If the teleprompter spews out words and statistics about progress, then the best way to verify it, my friend told me, is on the ground of Payatas, home of the biggest dump, which is less than 1,000 steps from where the President speaks. If x number of houses are claimed to have been built, then this can be double- checked if the slum dwellings near the Batasan are getting fewer. I don’t fully buy my friend’s simplistic validation process but you might give it a try. manilastandardtoday/2013/07/22/run-up-to-the-sona-2/ More Info: kingdomofjesuschrist.org smni sonshinetvradyo sonshineradio pinasglobal facebook/PINASNewspaper youtube/user/sonshinemedia/featured facebook/PastorACQ facebook/ApolloQuiboloy facebook/KingdomNation facebook/SonshineMedia facebook/Tamayong facebook/SMNI.Powerline facebook/Sounds.of.Worship facebook/SMNI.GiveUsThisDay
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 17:12:44 +0000
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