Wasn’t able to stay for the dinner presumptive presidential candidate Mar Roxas had last night with Filipino bloggers at Annabel’s in Quezon City.
But the initial 90 minutes with the good senator over peanuts, kropek and light beverages were enough for him to share with us his take on where the Philippines has been these past 7 years with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at the helm and his take on recent events.
Am still chewing on my notes so am sharing these initial bullets:
- Mar asks what the government of the day has to show for the 7 trllion pesos it has spent these last 7 years (give or take ‘systems losses’ from graft and the generous P500,000-a-pop ‘gifts’ to palace visitors);
- Mar proposes the establishment of a ‘People’s Fund’ within the national budget where there will be a clear itemization of monies to be allocated, and spent, on contingent events;
- Mar will vigorously pursue his call for E-VAT’s reform;
- Mar questions the wisdom of Romulo Neri’s selection as ‘super secretary’ and points out the it is not the mandate of the Social Security System to be lumped among the government’s so-called pro-poor agencies.
- Mar points out the the SSS is the pension fund of its 24-million-plus private sector employee-members and Neri’s legal responsibility, assuming he understands it, is to make that pension fund grow;
- Mar understands that Filipinos are looking for change they can believe in (my paraphrase);
- Mar believes the next 20 months can and should be devoted to lay down the blueprint for the reforms necessary all within the framework of the Constitution.
Note: Our thanks go to the the media team of Senator Mar led by Ms. Susan Ople and Mr. Carlo Ople for organizing the event.
Popularity: 1% [?]
awesome.
1.) i like the idea of a people’s fund.
2.) Neri’s appointment leaves a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth.
3.) good to know he realizes people are looking for change to believe in and that there are reforms to be made.
looking forward to your updates, ding!
Great notes Ding, thank you for sharing the night with us. I’m hoping that Jester (I can’t believe he wore his jester hat) can also share his notes.. I believe Marck was there too right? Also, I’m wondering if Jen made it to the meeting..
if roxas would be an effective president, or at least a viable “wannabee”, he should have an inkling of what happened to the 7 trillion-peso budget (is this accurate?) accumulated from 2001 to 2008 instead of asking what the government has to show for it. he was a part of this government from inception (managing to wangle a technocrat position that had something to do with trade and economics) after a stint with erap, until he aspired to become a senator and started thumbing his nose on the president. i’m sure he is aware of how the hostile senate has been putting roadblocks on the president’s initiatives from refusing to pass the budget to embarking on endless muckraking investigations, at the expense of actual legislation, that earned it what many considered a fitting description of being a “useless senate”
assuming the 7 trillion is accurate, a budget of 1 trillion pesos (for a developing island nation of over 80 million that is visited by multiple natural disasters every year) is not unreasonable by any stretch of the imagination. the gains in debt management, infrastructure, job creation, among others, are not invisible to eyes that refuse to see. of course, there are still poverty, competing interests, health, peace and order, national security, education and social problems. all these are part of human existence. even the richest and most advanced societies in the world have these. the fact that we are coping with what little we have is, i believe, good enough. we aspire, we dream, we work. we try, through our government, to eradicate all the sources of unhappiness in our society. does anyone think 1 trillion dollars a year is enough to accomplish that?
edit: 1 trillion pesos (not dollars) on line before last.
Compared to her post-EDSA counterparts, Gloria Arroyo has racked up the most foreign and domestic debt. That’s one of her legacies.
cvj, the debts of the past earn interests. the needs of today are not the same as yesterday’s. i started earning 400 pesos a month as a working student. my counterpart today would probably earn at least 10,000 pesos a month. just look around in the cities and countrsides, cvj. a lot of what we have now, we didn’t have in 2001. those will also be part of gma’s legacies.
Bencard, i wasn’t talking about comparing nominal amounts. In the posts i linked to, i applied a GDP deflator so that the comparison of monetary amounts will be apples to apples across different years. Even with that, GMA still came out ahead in terms of incurring debt. And even with all that additional debt, Family Income is lower in 2006 (the year of the most recent study) than in the previous years (2003, 2000 and 1997). That’s another one of GMA’s legacies.
on family income, did you factor in the NUMBER of families in 1997, 2000 & 2003, against that of 2006?
don’t tell me that’s not relevant.
Bencard, the measure in the Family Income and Expenditure Survery (FIES) is average income per family so by definition, the increase in number of families has already been factored in. The point is that 7 trillion (and the debts incurred to fund it) has failed to increase income per family. Oddly enough, during the same period, GDP per person [aka 'per capita'] was shown to be increasing. As i mentioned in my blog entry (which i linked to in the above entry at 12:54 am), this inconsistency casts doubt on the GDP figures which GMA has tried to take credit for all these years.
if a family’s income is solely derived from collecting garbage year after year, do you think it will increase with gdp? a person’s income is determined by his own productivity. his productivity is his own responsibility unless he is physically or mentally disabled.
and, cvj, the sooner you and likes of you realize that income, wealth, food, and other commodities are not DISTRIBUTED in our society, except to the poor and disabled who cannot support themselves, but EARNED, the greater the likelihood that we will prosper as a nation.
nick, my notes here. it was an interesting evening, to say the least.
@jester, thank you for the notes, very comprehensive.. I enjoyed it very much, and informative, in my opinion..
I’m picking my nose on this one. True, Bencard is right. He should probe government on how it will spend the 7 trillion peso budget, especially those allotted for the subsidy program (more than 8 billion pesos I suppose).
However, I like the idea of Mar about the “people’s fund” which I view to be a perpetual subsidy fund. Instead of going after those who caused this extreme economy malady in the first place (the oil companies and Meralco), he’ll be taxing us, poor taxpayers, for the inequities of oil companies and Meralco.
Besides, Mar has’nt answered my questions posed on FV by the way. I’m a registered Filipino voter. I have the right to know his thoughts on my questions.
Will follow up on the promised replies to the FV questions…