Tone it down, people are hungry

We do take our hats off to the President and his Cabinet, particularly the economic team and his close allies in the private sector, for all the efforts they’re expending to attract foreign investments.

Congress is being asked to give the Office of the President P4.56 billion in confidential and intelligence funds or CIF next year.

That amount, which is bigger than the CIFs being asked by at least three other critical agencies of government involving defense, local governments, and justice, will eat up nearly half of the entire P10.14 billion in confidential appropriations being sought by the Executive branch, as indicated in the 2024 National Expenditure Plan just submitted by Department of Budget and Management for congressional approval.

On top of its proposed CIF, the OP would also like Congress to allow for its disposal of P1.4 billion — that’s right, one billion, four hundred million pesos — no one’s making that humongous amount up, it’s listed as well in the Executive’s NEP wish list — to fund the travels of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. and his entourage, including his security contingent, next year.

The President, since he ascended to power in June 2022 up to the time he delivered his second State of the Nation Address on 24 July, had flown abroad 13 times.

That includes a trip he and his wife made to Singapore on 2 October 2022 along with his cousin, House Speaker Martin Romualdez, and son, neophyte lawmaker but holding the  high-ranking post of Senior Deputy Majority Floor Leader Sandro Marcos, to watch the Formula One Grand Prix race set in the rich city-state.

Marcos and his party flew to Singapore apparently on board the P2-billion Philippine Air Force command and control Gulfstream G280 jet. The month before, he had also been there on a state visit.

Not a few eyebrows were raised, with some quarters saying that the President, then not yet 100 days in office, seemed to be enjoying a jet-set lifestyle incompatible with his office and position.

People also felt that particular trip made by the President to Singapore smacked of insensitivity, coming as it did just days after a typhoon (Karding) had battered the country, leaving in its wake about a dozen dead, including a team of five rescuers who perished while trying to save typhoon victims.

Damage inflicted by Typhoon Karding to agriculture was estimated at some P3 billion, another sour note since the President had taken it upon himself to assume the task of overall Philippine agriculture overseer. “People would like to see a concrete response to the crisis, and not a jet-setting president,” remarked a progressive leader.

To be sure, we do take our hats off to the President and his Cabinet, particularly the economic team and his close allies in the private sector, for all the efforts they’re expending to attract foreign investments and get the country back on its feet after the Covid-19 pandemic.

But must we remind them, specifically our top public servants, that undertaking the task of grabbing global investors’ attention towards the Philippines as a viable investment hub is not an opportunity to take along their children and other family members who have no pertinent roles to play on these trips on a vacation, living it up in plush expensive accommodations like the Carlyle in New York at the expense of struggling taxpayers from a country where people, children are experiencing hunger?

The results of the latest survey by the largely perceived as credible Social Weather Stations or SWS found that more Filipino families experienced being hungry with nothing to eat at least once during the second quarter of the current year.

Conducted between 28 June to 1 July, the SWS survey found 10.4 percent of Filipino families in a state of involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months, with the highest hunger incidence happening in Metro Manila at 15.7 percent, followed by areas outside the National Capital Region at 11.3 percent, Visayas at 9.3 percent, and Mindanao at 6.3 percent.

The call for sensitivity is serious, particularly at this time when the yawning gap between social classes  those with full stomachs, and those empty  hasn’t yet been narrowed substantially.

If this is not admonition enough to tone things down while using the people’s money judiciously in conducting the task inclusive, we hope  of elevating Filipinos’ lives from poverty and pushing the country forward to a better state, then we don’t know what else to say.

Credit belongs to : tribune.net.ph