THE LEGAL FRONT

An assessment of a President’s performance after only a year in office can provide a good sense of his governance direction and the soundness of his initial steps.  It is a directional gauge and a qualitative, not a quantitative, measure of the governance steps so far taken. Initially, his most important step is in his choice of his cabinet, the people who will assist him in governance – in formulating,  finetuning and implementing policies. The next important step is the setting of priorities and  standards, given the resources he can command and the time for action allowed him. A good cabinet, properly tapped, can serve as a multiplier, giving him more thinking minds and more hands to act. In particular, a good cabinet team can propose options or alternative courses of actions, allowing him the opportunity and time to act in many directions, and better use of available resources. PBBM’s performance so far has not been bad at all based on his cabinet choices, the areas he has chosen to prioritize, and his initial actions in light of the challenges he faced upon assumption to office. By choosing to handle Agriculture, he is apparently well aware of our food security problem, given our expanding population and our agricultural production that has perrenially lagged behind.  Joined together (as they are, most of the time), these are mammoth problems that a President, as the bossman, can best and effectively undertake with capable underlying support. The problem is thus reduced to PBBM’s leadership and the focus he can provide, and the supportive resources and mechanisms he can find or put in place. Overall, in PBBM’s case, this initial decision resolves the major part of the problem – the need to prioritize: food security above everything else and the people before anybody else. By handing over the Education portfolio to the Vice President, PBBM has also signalled another prioritization, and the degree of handling and focus he wants. VP Sara is a hands-on self-starter with expertise and experience on legal and local government concerns.  In Davao City, she showed the will she could put into a problem and, on her own, can produce fruitful results. The Philippines ranks 77th out of 132 countries in the 2022 Global Knowledge Index that assesses a nation's expertise in terms of education, innovation, knowledge, economy, technology, and research and development. Under this ranking, our educational system may be better than half of the countries surveyed, but we cannot rest easy on this kind of record; it is up to VP Sara to lead us out of this almost mediocre ranking. In tackling this task, the administration  must not forget that the Philippines cannot be an isolated island in our now globalized world. We have long standing survival problems, and we need others to help us resolve them. We must interact with friends and allies to secure cooperation and assistance rather than encourage competition. Education is a means to secure for us the tools we need - to innovate, keep up with developing technology, research on our own, and develop our human and natural resources and our economy. Unless we so equip ourselves, we would be left behind, relegated to the dung heap of history. Who would want this kind of historical verdict?  Apparently, not PBBM nor VP Sara; hence, their focus on education – a policy choice that is not bad at all. An example of the importance of setting correct directions and priorities early on, is the case of President Cory Aquino, who – at the start of her administration – gave top priority to her promise to set all political detainees free, including the top ranking communists already jailed by President Marcos, Sr.  As history shows, this initial decision started a chain of events that bedeviled her administration until the end, and took time and several succeeding presidents to rectify. Another signal of PBBM’s prioritization, is his choice of Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro for National Defense. Gibo carries topnotch credentials as a lawyer and as a defense specialist. He had occupied the Defense portfolio under GMA before.   PBBM’s choice for the Defense portfolio effectively prioritizes the West Philippine Sea sovereignty issue as a top problem, and signals our reliance on our traditional defense allies and on the solutions that diplomacy can provide, in resolving this problem.  This is a decision that, again, is not bad at all. Rather than be deluded by glowing initial assessments, our leaders should focus on the sustainability of their decisions and the actions they are taking.  Sustainability has not been our strong point and in fact has been our problem in recent presidential history.  Presidents Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) and Fidel Ramos (FVR) initially performed well in governance and in their handling the economy. Under FVR, for example, the people had the sense that governance had become systematic and effective.  The economy boomed.  Up to a certain extent, this was true also for GMA.  But at some point, these developments stalled, stopped in their tracks by many causes, some of them external, but largely by actions of the administrations themselves. In the case of FVR, external factors intervened and affected our economy. But people’s trust and effective governance began to really wane when the Centennial celebration scandal began to unfold.  In GMA’s case, the allegations of election irregularities (the Hello, Garci tape) and of corruption triggered the diminution of the people’s trust. In both cases, the encouraging early start thus proved to be unsustainable. A golden lesson, too, from these examples is that corruption– a problem for all administrations, bar none - is a plague that everyone must  carefully avoid. PBBM is starting out as President in the third decade of the 21st century, with six presidents separating him from his father’s presidency. He does not exactly face the same challenges his father and the other presidents faced. But there are commonalities, among them, food security, our recurring economic problems, and graft and corruption, all of them serious although differing in kind and intensity. A unique and new one for him is the West Philippine Sea problem.  To PBBM’s credit, he has identified them all and has creditably acted.  In this sense, as of the end of his first year, his performance has not been bad at all. Whether he will have the grit to sustain his focus and persevere as new governance challenges unfold,remains to be seen. Until then, let us put our hope in him and support him. ([[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]))