President Aquino's speech on his first year in office, as excerpted by the Inquirer,
“Before, there was resignation, dejection and apathy,” the President told reporters.
“If you remember at the time, you were writing about the people’s apathy and numbness, as if they did not expect anything from their government. They were blasé to scandals that were being unearthed,” he said.
“Now, more people are expectant that their lives are changing for the better,” Mr. Aquino said.
He said growing demands for change from the people were a good thing.
And these are the cited accomplishments of the administration
Again from the same article,
These include the 21,800 families of policemen and soldiers who will have decent homes before the year ends, the 2 million poor families set to benefit from the conditional cash transfer program and the 240,000 farmers who will benefit from 2,000-kilometer farm-to-market roads finished in just one year, Mr. Aquino said.
“Isn’t it clear that there is change?” he said.
He said that because of reforms in the government financial system, the government was able to save funds more than the amounts allocated by the General Appropriations Act to implement programs, the President said.
These include providing P12 billion for the “Pantawid Pasada” for transport workers affected by high oil prices, he said.
“Housing, rice, security, salaries, roads, Pantawid Pasada and other lifeguards for the people drowning from poverty. These are the changes that we are reaping now,” he said.
It’s another vindication for me as economic reality has been unmasking all the illusions of deliverance from our over dependency on political distribution as a way to success.
Also, this justifies why I have not and will not exercise the so-called the rights to suffrage which only buttresses this perpetual charade.
People hardly realize that there are only TWO ways to attain people’s needs: this is by production (economic means) or by plunder (political means--forcibly taking other’s resources through political mandates) [Franz Oppenheimer].
The political route is a non-market process of distributing resources ‘legally’ expropriated from society. The choices made by political leaders are premised according to their biases, ambitions, interests, value preferences, ideology, networks, comfort zones, cultural, educational or religious orientation and other personal attributes.
Remember, political leaders are not gods but humans. So they suffer from the same frailties as anyone else. Most importantly they suffer from the knowledge problem.
The only difference is that they are backed by the power of organized violence through the state.
And since all economies are highly complex and dynamic, political distributions means taking or assuming choices for the benefit of a few groups from among the widely diversified and competing sectors.
Because various interests groups will jockey for such privilege, the societal interactions by these competing groups would translate to the employment of patronage, horse trading, shady deals, bribery and many other morally unscrupulous actions.
Politics is a zero sum game. Thus, the actions of these competing groups along with the respective political entities involved will be predicated on or revolve around attaining political goals by guiltism, covetism, envyism angerism and villainism (to borrow from libertarian Robert Ringer) which always leads to “resignation, dejection and apathy” and most importantly to perennial conflict.
So it never changes.
Yet it is naive, seemingly insensitive and supercilious to suggest that there has been "growing demands for change", as if Filipinos have been chronic dolts and have been blindly satisfied with the status quo despite their dire condtions.
The reason people act is to fulfill their uneasiness, thus, always strive for change.
The apparent passivity of the Philippine populace to political misconducts is NOT because of the lack of desire for change, but because most appear to have succumbed to the frustrations of the failed glamorized heroism of the state. Repeated government failures have jaded the Filipino’s vim.
And it is because of too much expectations founded from the grave misunderstanding on the role and limits of the state that has signified as the country’s main blight or the nation's Achilles Heels'.
Importantly, such delusions extends to the elitist academia (which serves as the recruitment pool for bureaucrats and private sector patrons of political actions) and well into the business sector, whom all look for patronage, anti-competition, and doleout as virtuous and a necessary condition for economic development.
If there have been any changes during the first year of President Aquino’s term these accounts for changes on the beneficiaries of redistribution.
Essentially, President Aquino has been no different from the actions of the predecessors, which is what I have been saying even prior to the last elections.
Yet most of the incumbent’s reported accomplishments have been designed as “feel good” noble intended redistribution programs (“Pantawid Pasada” or cash transfers to farmers) and to cosset groups that assures their hold on to power (policemen and soldiers).
This reminds me of the great H.L. Mencken’s description of former US President T.R. Roosevelt, whom Professor Don Boudreaux quotes from A Mencken Chrestomathy
What ailed him was the fact that his lust for glory, when it came to a struggle, was always vastly more powerful than his lust for the eternal verities. Tempted sufficiently, he would sacrifice anything and everything to get applause.
As a general rule, political self-interests signify as the most important priority for political actors. Apparently, President Aquino has not been an exception.
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