Editorial cartoon by VINCENT GO
THE impeachment trial of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona has entered its fifth week, with President Benigno Aquino III saying there will be no let up in his crusade against the country’s top magistrate.
To be sure, running after crooks in government and putting them away where they could do no further harm is a task citizens would expect of a just and responsible government. When that government targets the big fish, it deserves public support.
But the Aquino government has been after Corona (and the person who appointed him, former president Gloria Arroyo) with apparent single-minded obsession, that some sectors have accused the President of neglecting other equally important duties.
Last Feb. 14, farmers affiliated with Task Force Mapalad snuck into Malacanang to get the President to pay them some attention. The farmers are concerned that the agrarian reform program will lapse in 2014, its mandated deadline, with government unable to complete implementation. Aquino’s performance has been dismal, the farmers say, and there’s still much to do to ensure that the landless get their land.
And then there’s the corruption elsewhere in government. Recently the Department of Finance filed charges against a clerk of the Bureau of Customs found to be in possession of a Porsche and two houses, which he did not declare in his Statement of Assets Liabilities and Net Worth. No doubt Corona’s impeachment trial has made agencies of government more aware of SALN-related issues, and this would have been a good time to do a bureaucracy-wide lifestyle check. Unfortunately, there’s really no systematic or concerted anti-corruption campaign, outside Corona and that clerk.
There are other pressing issues that urgently call for government action. Disasters marked the end of 2011 and start of 2012—Sendong struck in northern Mindanao while an earthquake levelled towns and killed scores in Negros Oriental—and the threat of more such tragedies are forever on people’s minds. A national disaster risk reduction strategy needs to be devised and implemented to brace the country for such calamities.
In Mindanao, business people are sounding the alarm that a power crisis could cripple industry and the economy, and energy officials have admitted there really is a shortage looming, if not already upon Mindanao. And then there are the perennial problem areas—housing, unemployment, poverty, education—for which the Aquino government has yet to formulate a vision.
And so while Filipinos will perhaps never begrudge Noynoy Aquino his anti-Corona crusade, they do also expect him to fix the country’s countless other problems with as much zeal and determination. If he does so, he would no doubt put himself on higher moral ground. – Luz Rimban
