Come July 27, Monday, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo once again speaks to Filipinos in her 2009 State of the Nation Address (SONA).
Logically, this is her last before the Constitution (the unchanged one of 1987) forces her to step down on June 30, 2010.
There are reports indicating Arroyo will use the SONA to express a direction for moves for charter change.
Hopefully, the next President delivers his or her first SONA in July 2010, to open Congress for a new era.
The SONA is one solemn event in the strictest sense. It is one occasion when we cease to become just people from Bukidnon, Bohol, Isabela, Cotabato, or Batanes. We become a people from one nation looking at our present collective situation.
The SONA for all its worth, nuances, controversies is a report card. Somehow just as the report card our children show us every grading period.
Basically the SONA is the national government’s, not just the President’s report card of performance. But since the President is chief executive, command responsibility dictates we look at her for accountability.
The President has a duty to give the nation a real report. Not a fantastic imagination of dreams but an actual grasp of real achievements of targets, goals, missions, and above all a vision.
A SONA should be presented and viewed thru a framework: the realization of plans, the solution of problems, and the preparation for anticipated challenges.
Some people say since the SONA is a report of achievements it naturally blurs on the bottlenecks, unaccomplished, and if not failures.
In a way, the SONA should touch on very pressing issues and situations in the country like the peace process in Mindanao. The President should go beyond the hype of this as award-winning journalist Patricio Diaz said in his column.
But somehow, the SONA is like a balance sheet – a report of financial condition of an organization. It should show the assets, liabilities, and the net worth.
More than the figures, the SONA should be a sincere and forthright account of reality. It should not only inform, but convince, and inspire.
Whether Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was able to do that in her past eight SONAs and if vows to reflect in this SONA come Monday afternoon, will tell us enough whether people would still listen and deem it important.
Already, a newspaper in the US has expressed in an editorial on July 26 that the President is unwanted in her visit to the White House this week. The paper called a “mistake” President Barack Obama’s choice of Arroyo as first S.E. Asian leader to pay a state visit in his administration.
Nevertheless, the SONA is an opportunity to gather as a nation, reflect as a person, and plan as organized individuals to learn from lessons and make resolutions.
Among many, every Filipino, rich or poor; at home or abroad; who cares for Arroyo or not, should use this time to discern who to choose and what should we look for in a chief executive, head of state, and national symbol of leadership. (Based on the Editorial of Bukidnon’s Central Mindanao Newswatch/July 23 to 29, 2009 issue)
