The President’s men
Presidential spokesperson Cerge Remonde, after a long session with his teleprompter – his effort to smile pleasantly at regular intervals looked remarkably unpleasant – expressed his discontent over the persistent coverage of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s excessive travel spending. In his briefing, Remonde said that it no longer mattered whatever the administration said, because there are people who would persist in finding the holes in the government’s explanations. “Their objective is not to seek the truth, or to pursue good governance. It is simply to make issues political.”
This is Remonde’s perpetual excuse for anything remotely unpleasant aired about his President. A letter, written to US President Barack Obama, regarding the state of the nation, was deemed “the height of political uncivility.”
Questions as to the source of funds for the $20,000 Le Cirque dinner from militant group Bayan resulted in a demonization in the grand tradition of Major General Jovito Palparan. All criticism is “agitation propaganda.”
The dissent, says Remonde, “is the fruit of a poisonous tree” from a communist organization “dedicated to the overthrow of dedicated governments.”
This is the brilliant reasoning of the gentleman who refuses interviews with “I only speak on media issues” – perhaps the man with the mistaken belief that a press secretary speaks of the press, instead of to the press.
Presidential Economic Spokesman Gary Olivar shakes his head after his convoluted explanation over why the excess spending is justified. “I don’t know why people don’t understand this.”
At the risk of being called a propagandist, an anarchist, or a card-carrying member of the New People’s Army, I will have to admit my inferior intelligence to Mr. Olivar, and say that I do not understand the explanations forwarded by the charming gentlemen of the Presidential Press Office.
I would be very grateful if anyone could explain why Deputy Presidential Spokesman Anthony Golez claims that criticism makes it appear that “the leader of our nation is somehow not good enough to be hosted in the best hotels, or chauffeured around town, whenever he or she travels abroad as the representative of one of the 15 largest countries in the world.”
Perhaps Mr. Golez forgets that “one of the 15 largest countries in the world” is also one of the poorest. “We have increasingly become a global community,” says Remonde in justifying spending for the US trip.
It is that increasingly global community that will not be fooled by the best hotels and Le Cirque dinners. I am not certain what we are attempting to prove to the United States and the global community by spending P6 million on tips to bellboys and waiters.
If it is that we are wealthy and stable, all it takes is a minute on Google to know just how desperately poor the majority of this country is. All this posturing proves is that we have a President who cares far more about the trappings of success than the state of the national treasury – not precisely the safest country to invest in.
And yet she deserves it, they all deserve it, says the gentlemen of the press office. No matter if foreign travels exceeded its own budget by P1.2 billion – it is within the law to take from the contingency fund anyway. For as long as the benefits outweigh the costs, there is no problem. In answer to a reporter’s question – Does this mean the President can spend as much as she wants if there are benefits? – Remonde says that is basic management.
We are “still ahead of the game,” says Olivar. In the US trip alone, says Remonde, the President’s efforts exceeded P6 billion in income for the country.
There is a shopping list of successes. The President secured P198 million in the Veteran’s Equity Fund – a fund that was approved February, and was the result of almost half a century of struggle for Philippine veterans. The President brought in P429 million in defense and military assistance – the same P429 million already disbursed in the last 10 years and certainly not forthcoming because of the recent US trip.
The President brought in P212 million in US aid to Mindanao – the same P212 million budget stretched across 2001-2008. He talks about a bill that will provide the country with P2.2 billion but has barely passed first reading in the US Congress. They talk about “diplomatic gains.” They talk about OFWs who are “of course benefited” by GMA’s presence.
There is a danger to arguing with numbers – unlike words, they are more difficult to subject to the comfortable vagueness of rhetoric. It does not stop Olivar from trying. “This is a mishmash of different sources.” His purpose is simply to “give an idea,” in “an attempt to put order in the wild charges. “Six billion, says Remonde, “in the US trip alone.”
That, says a disdainful Olivar, is worth 312,000 dinners at Le Cirque. The rise in foreign travel spending – last year, the allocated budget went from P130 million to P170 million – is justified by an increase in revenue. “We had a windfall.”
If this is Remonde’s “basic management,” it’s stunning why our debt hasn’t ballooned to twice its size. The benefits do not only have to outweigh the cost, the entire cost has to result in the benefit to justify it.
There is no reason to believe it is lavish spending that locks bilateral trade treaties, and no reason not to expect the same result with a smaller contingent and lower spending. But irrelevant of the pack of lies and strings of inconsistencies, this is what is forgotten in all of Olivar’s and Remonde’s “mishmash”: there is no such thing as the President “deserving” to “spend as much as she wants,” simply because of an imaginary P6 billion.
It is her duty to bring in that P6 billion, we are not compelled to either reward her or forgive her for the waste of taxpayers’ money.
When Speaker Prospero Nograles has the effrontery to bring his wife to the US trip and say he did not know who was spending for it, when Representative Bienvenido Abante announces he deserves to pay for his trip out of his annual congressional travel allocation (“because I met with some Fil-Am communities”) and when an undersecretary of finance says it is no problem to overspend by a billion pesos because she took it out of the presidential contingency fund, it smacks not of insensitivity, but an absolute apathy for the millions of uneducated and underfed citizens whose lives could become monumentally better by one less useless congressman touring Washington in a government-paid limousine.
Olivar’s projected P6 billion, and his revenue windfall, can do very little in the face of a PhilHealth that has announced the possibility of bankruptcy in 2016 due to an unpaid P19.2-billion government debt.
The gentlemen of the Malacañang press office are unhappy with the criticism. They say this made a mockery of the country in the international community. I suspect these gentlemen are giving the local press and the opposition too much credit. After all, we never ate in Le Cirque.
