AS may be expected in a speech to Congress, President Duterte last Monday asked it to enact a number of measures to help the administration carry on its reform program in the next three years.
Among these measures were the creation of new departments of the government, notably a Department of Disaster Resilience, a Department of Water Resources, and a Department of Overseas Filipino Workers. The first two seek to address the problems of storms and floods alternating with periods of drought. The third seeks to assume better care of our Overseas Filipino Workers, now a major source of our national income.
The President asked for action on a number of bills that provide for fiscal reforms, led by TRAIN 2, also called TRABAHO bill, lowering the corporate income tax while revising the system of taxes and other government charges on foreign firms invited to locate in our economic zones.
He called for better pay for the country’s teachers and nurses and other government workers, part of an overall program to improve government services to the people. There will be right-sizing in the reorganization of government agencies which have grown too big and too unwieldy. He called on all government agencies and local governments to simplify their procedures for permits and other documents.
He called for the reinstatement of the death penalty for heinous crimes related to drugs and plunder. The drug problem, he said, has proved to be difficult to eradicate. Drugs funded the five-month Marawi siege, he said, and the drug problem continues to plague many communities all over the country to this day.
But the President reserved his most ardent appeal to Congress and to the nation at large when he spoke of corruption which, he said, is at the root of the continuing drug problem, is in every facet of government operation, and is in the very lives of the people.
“I have seen the face of the enemy,” he said, “and the enemy is us. We are our own tormentors and our own demons. We find corruption everywhere. It’s a national embarrassment. It’s a national shame.”
He said he had fired or caused to resign over a hundred officials and other appointees in government. “I will push harder in the pursuit of programs that we have started but always within the parameters of the law.”
We expect this 18th Congress to do better than the last one which got so embroiled in disputes between congressmen and senators over “pork barrel” in public works projects that it passed the National Budget for 2019 three months later than it should have, with ill consequences for the entire program of government.
We may recall that the Senate finally submitted the bill to the President but with a note saying it believed R75 billion in various public works projects were “pork barrel” of certain congressmen. Without any further discussion and without any further comment, the President simply vetoed the R75 billion, then signed the bill into law.
After that State of the Nation Address (SONA), in which the President strongly denounced corruption, not only in government but also in a society that tolerates it, we look forward to big changes in government operations. We can also expect a more expeditious action in Congress this year on various urgent bills and, most important, on the national budget for 2020.
