THE nation will tune today to hear what President Duterte has to stay in his annual State of the Nation Address (SONA). It is officially an address to the two chambers of Congress – the Senate and the House of Representatives – sitting in joint session at the start of the new 18th Congress. But the President will actually be talking to the nation at large in this age of modern communications.
The President will report on what the government has accomplished this last year, the state of the nation as it is today after three years of his administration, and what he plans to accomplish not just in the coming year but in the second half of his six-year administration. There are some who believe he should look forward a little further in to the future and speak of what he believes the country can and should do in the next decade – a ten-year program – with ideas that the next administration can build on.
The President could do all these – surely he has ideas for the future of the country which he has discussed with his cabinet members and other officials of his administration. He has done so much in the first three years of his administration, most especially in economic development, in infrastructure, and transportation. So that he recently named the cabinet men in charge of these areas as the top achievers of his administration.
But the SONA must be more than a report on achievements, on the state of the nation as a whole. It must connect to the people the President serves. It must respond to their views on what still need to be done and to their appeals for help and for action on problems touching their lives.
An opinion survey conducted last week by Pulse Asia Research gave their top three main concerns – workers’ salaries, prices of basic commodities, and job opportunities. They are all economic issues, all intimately touching the lives of most people in the country.
They may not be as headline-grabbing as our disputes with other countries in the South China Sea, or the just concluded mid-term elections, or the unexpectedly difficult war on drugs, or the continuing fight on corruption in many government offices. And they are not as urgent as water shortages, typhoon warnings, and damage from floods and earthquakes. But they are at the core of the everyday lives of most Filipinos.
The respondents in the survey said they would want the President to speak on these three matters – salaries, prices, and jobs. After these three were the issues of our relations with China, illegal drugs, the need to improve Philippine agriculture, poverty, corruption, infrastructure development, and human rights.
The President has much to be proud of and the nation will be ready to congratulate him and the many officials and employees of his administration who have made the Philippines one of the fastest developing countries in the world today. There is today such great hope for peace in Mindanao with the establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region. He must speak of these advances which should inspire us all.
But after all these accomplishments, the people would like to hear the President speak on their own little problems – their salaries, the prices of commodities, and job opportunities for so many in their community. More than any other issues, the people hope the President will speak on his thoughts and his plans on them when he stands up in Congress today to deliver his State of the Nation Address.
