ENDING poverty was the greatest promise made by President Benigno “Noynoy” C. Aquino III in his inaugural speech on June 30. Of course, the street-wise Filipino, who has grown cynical after having been subjected to life’s vicissitudes made worse by politicians’ broken promises, will mock it and may even scoff at it as wishful thinking.
A careful examination of the speech, however, will reveal that the new President didn’t make an absolute promise that he would end poverty in a wink. He said “through good governance in the coming years we will lessen our problems. The destiny of the Filipino will return to its rightful place and, as each year passes, the Filipino’s problems will continue to lessen.”
This means that Mr. Aquino has no illusion about ending poverty overnight. His speech was very clear that mitigating poverty requires good governance to begin with.
An economics graduate, the 50-year old Chief Executive said “our foremost duty is to lift the nation from poverty through honest and effective governance.”
Of course, effective governance will not be Noynoy’s responsibility alone. It also means the people around him, his family members, his trusted team, and the rest of us, the governed. We are all indispensable factors in Mr. Aquino’s capability to turn his promise to reality.
Definitely, Noynoy is not the first President to promise an end to poverty in this country. Most, if not all the past 14 Presidents, likewise made the same vow to fight poverty and want through their programs of government. Unfortunately, if we consider the dire straits our country is in today, those promises have remained just that—promises unfulfilled.
However, it’s time that we all realize that Noynoy is a different person in many ways from his predecessors. His integrity, clean record in public service, and his being a humble son of iconic and well-loved parents —martyred former senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. and the late former President Corazon C. “Cory” Aquino—somehow give us, the people, hope that things will be different this time under his watch.
The more than 15 million Filipinos who voted him into office did so in the belief that Noynoy’s qualities and the circumstances of his upbringing, was the answer to their desperate longing for a leader who could deliver them from the hellhole of misgovernance.
As for his failure to include a single Mindanaoan in his Cabinet, Noynoy may have his reasons—hopefully, not politically motivated. The election results clearly showed that Mindanaoans chose, in his stead, comebacking former President Joseph Estrada. This is not to say that no Mindanaoan has a chinaman’s chance to serve in the Noynoy’s official family in the next six years. Certainly, Mindanao is not lacking in qualified individuals who Noynoy could tap in the course of his presidency. But the time to do that is not now. It is the nature of Philippine politics that the initial period of a victor’s limited reign is payback time for those who helped deliver the votes that catapulted a candidate into public office.
That’s human nature. And Noynoy is as human as any of the rest of us. Except that, he happens to be the President.
Our President.
