SONA-5 Glimpses

By Art Jimenez

 

SONA basic. The State of the Nation Address (SONA) is the President’s yearly constitutional duty to report to the nation how the country is doing, what his administration’s agenda is this and in the coming year, and his legislative proposals to Congress. The protocol involves an official invitation for the President to speak before Congress meeting in a joint session.

:: Hands in pockets. A properly masked President Rodrigo R. Duterte walked into the Batasan Hall, bowed to his audience, took his place at the rostrum, and began to deliver his fifth and penultimate SONA before a live audience of a few representatives and a sparse gallery of government officials and members of the diplomatic corps. Less than 20 senators watched via Zoom app.

:: Longest SONA. Midway in his speech, the president warned this would be his longest SONA even if Senator Go – his former SAP (special assistant to the President)- would be the only one left to listen to him. He spoke for one hour, 40 minutes. Nobody left; Sen. Go didn’t go either.

:: Thank you, frontliners. President RRD acknowledged the dignitaries present and thanked the anti-COVID-19 frontliners for their sacrifices. He commiserated with the grieving families of health workers who perished in the service of the country and the Filipino people.

:: Arrogant Senator Drilon. PRRD described Senator Frank Drilon as arrogant for taking a dynastical swipe at his mayor daughter and congressman son and defending the Lopezes whose ABS-CBN franchise was not renewed by the House Committee on Legislative Franchises.

That opening is the first of its kind in our SONA history.

:: Duterte denounced the drug dealers that destroy families and consign to perennial poverty, the “corrupt, the grafters, and the influence peddlers,” the “corruption and ineptitude” in the distribution of government assistance to the “unemployed, the sick and the destitute” that run into billions of pesos.

:: But Duterte warned: While the corrupt “must be laughing while they stash their dirty monies. But not for long. They cannot outrun the long arm of the law.”

:: Lethal injection. He asked for the reimposition of the death sentence, by lethal injection for grave offenses found in the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Note:

Some 30 states in the U.S. of A. have the death penalty, including seven with lethal injection as a method of execution, namely Alabama, Arizona, California, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Other methods are electrocution, gas chamber, hanging, and firing squad.

On the business side of things.

:: Bayanihan 2. Duterte asked Congress to pass the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act aimed at providing low-interest loans to small businesses, give more financial aid to displaced workers and their poor families, extend funding to online learning, and additional money for COVID-19 testing.

:: CREATE. Duterte asked Congress to pass the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act (CREATE). This bill aims to assist businesses to recover from the ill-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their enterprises as well as to attract new investments into the country. The proposed law will lower corporate income tax from 30 to 25 percent and rationalize the tax and non-tax incentives awarded to preferred areas of investments.

:: Tourism. PRRD called on us Filipinos to travel locally to boost tourism and the economy “once the necessary systems are in place.”

:: Give debtors a break. The president told the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to allow loan payment extensions for the indebted Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) without penalties and charges.

:: Telcos. The president gave Globe and Smart until end-December to improve their telecom services or face expropriation. Both companies have only some 17,000 cell sites between them. (They complain of right-of-way problems and red tape. Senate President Vicente Sotto III said on the air the telco inaction has long been the problem even as “number of signatures [i.e., red tape] has been considerably reduced.”)

PRRD forgot to mention the third telco, Mislatel Consortium of Mr. Dennis Uy of Davao. Now renamed Dito Telecommunity, Senator Sotto described it as “in limbo.”