The fairy tales of Gloria Arroyo

A week before Gloria Arroyo delivered her State of the Nation Address (SONA) in Congress, a nationwide survey of her credibility was conducted. To no one's surprise, only 15 percent of Filipinos thought that Gloria will tell the truth in her SONA. The rest of our countrymen thought otherwise or simply did not care anymore. True enough, last July 24, we were treated to a series of fairy tales and fantasies by Gloria. She will build roads, highways, skyways, airports, seaports, dams, windmills etc. etc. She literally promised to make a heaven out of our wretched and impoverished country. To the obvious delight however of her congressmen, governors, mayors, cabinet members and generals, they lustily applauded her, with their mouths salivating at the expected windfall of kickbacks, bribes and other financial rewards coming their way.

The cost of all these fairy tales and fantasies of Gloria Arroyo is staggering between 1 to 2 trillion pesos. Where on earth will Gloria get the money? New taxes? Our people are already taxed to their noses with the EVAT. Foreign borrowings? We are already drowning in our foreign debt. Already, almost half of our annual budget goes to the payment of interest alone on our foreign debt. Or is Gloria waiting for manna from heaven? But the last time this happened was some 3,000 years ago, at the time of the Old Testament.

The real message which Gloria wanted to convey however, is this: Because she has wonderful dreams and plans for our country, we should just accept her as our legitimate president and forget that she cheated in the election, told us lies face to face, and plundered our country to poverty. So, instead of confronting the real problems that beset our impoverished nation, Gloria Arroyo has chosen to beguile our people with future mega projects. From somebody who cannot even provide for the basic necessities of our people, she talks of grandiose plans to make us forget our gnawing hunger and poverty.

What are the real problems of our country, which Gloria has cleverly skirted in her SONA? These are : 1. Poverty and widespread hunger. 2. Unemployment. 3. Health care and medicines. 4. Education. 5. Massive corruption on government. 6. Summary executions of activists and other political dissenters. And 7. whether she likes it or not, and for as long as she lives, the question of the legitimacy of her claim to her office.

POVERTY. A recent survey shows that 67 percent of our people now think they are poor, up 10 points from last year. Gloria however told us that during her presidency, the incidence of poverty has sharply gone down. How did Gloria do this? Easy. She lowered the poverty line, thereby instantly eliminating several million families out of the classification of being poor. Presto, Gloria has lowered the incidence of poverty. Our empty stomachs and high prices however tell us a different story.

UNEMPLOYMENT. Gloria also tells us that unemployment has also gone down since she became president. How did she do it? Did she create one million jobs as she premised last year? Of course not. She simply ordered her NEDA statisticians to follow another formula. A man who has worked for 15 days as a government casual can no longer be considered unemployed. A man who refuses to take a job because the salary is so low, it will not even pay for his transportation and meals, cannot be classified as unemployed because he refuses to work. With this formula, Gloria has again sharply reduced the percentage of unemployment. Instant solution, like magic!

HEALTH CARE and MEDICINES. Gloria tells us that she has solved the high prices of medicines with her "Botica ni Gloria" program. Where is this Botica? Who knows? Has anybody seen one? As to hospital care, what I know is that government hospitals are so overwhelmed with patients, that the seriously sick patients just die in the waiting rooms while awaiting admission. Many are forced to go to private hospitals, which they cannot afford at all.

EDUCATION. Sec. Fe Hidalgo was removed from the DepEd because she admitted on TV that there is a shortage of classrooms and teachers in our public schools. After Sec. Hidalgo 's removal, Gloria boldly announced that there is actually an excess of classrooms. All that needs to be done is to cram 100 pupils in every classroom instead of only 50, and hold classes on double shifts. So again, the classroom shortage is solved. Presto! There is now a surplus of classrooms.

CORRUPTION. The culture of corruption in government, which was institutionalized during the Marcos regime has been magnified many times over by Gloria Arroyo. Assuming Gloria gets her manna from heaven to finance her fantasies and hallucinations, how much of this money will be lost to corruption, which goes all the way to Gloria's bedroom? 40 percent? 60 percent? Two years from now, when none of her hallucinations will be realized, expect Gloria to push aside and ignore these mega projects in her SONA. She will just conjure new fairy tales to beguile us again.

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