Press Release
July 27, 2009

Press statement of Senator Loren Legarda

ON SONA

The President can be expected to dress up her SONA to present the best face possible to our people, if not to save face for her administration. But the big question would be: Is her report credible? Her rose-colored view of her administration is certainly contradicted by no less than government economists, who had reported that the poverty incidence in our country has reached 32 percent, which means that one out of every three Filipinos is poor.

This is the highest poverty level among member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Neighboring Indonesia used to have a poverty rate higher than ours, but now it has a poverty incidence of only 16 percent. According to the National Statistics Coordination Board (NSCB) as cited by IBON, there has been a 2.1 million increase to 4.7 million in the number of poor Filipinos from 2000 to 2006. The most recent Social Weather Station survey says that one in five Filipino families had gone hungry in the last three months.

The administration's purported accomplishments as touted by the President in her SONA would mean nothing to the majority of our people if government cannot address primordial concerns like poverty, hunger, rising incidences of criminality and its seeming helplessness to stop corruption.

ON GOOD GOVERNANCE

The verdict of the Filipino people on the performance of the Arroyo administration is shown by the President's approval rating of only 26 percent, indicating that the overwhelming majority of our people do not approve of her performance.

The present administration is also perceived as the most corrupt administration since the Marcos dictatorship. The record of the Arroyo administration in dealing with corruption is dismal. In human rights, it has been condemned by the United Nations, other global rights organizations, as well as local NGOs, as the most guilty of human rights violations. In economics, the Philippines has one of the worst ratings in competitiveness.

No amount of window-dressing can hide the truth from the Filipino people.

ON EDUCATION

The administration boast about improving education is hollow. At the beginning of this school year, our people saw on television and read reports about the acute shortage of classrooms, wherein two or three pupils have to share one desk, and many others have to study outside the classroom in corridors.

According to government figures, the number of children and out of school youth has grown by 2.45 million from 2001 when this administration started to 2009. The deterioration of the quality of education and the growing number of out-of-school youths and dropouts is due to the lower appropriation given by this administration to education. The Arroyo administration allotted only 15 percent of its national budget to education, compared to 18 percent by the Estrada administration and 16 percent by the Ramos administration.

The facts show that the administration's record in the field of education is nothing to crow about.

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