President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s second State of the Nation Address (SONA) last Monday that lasted for two hours and one minute is the longest so far in the country’s history breaking the record set by former Philippine strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos. The Chief Executive intermittently deviated from his written speech to speak from the heart of what he felt should be done on pressing issues like the intensified anti-drug operations, his policy against irresponsible mining, the cancellation of the peace talks with the National Democratic Front (NDF), his administration’s priority legislations, among others, interspersed with personal jokes and the usual foul language. This second SONA is not as exciting as the first one last year because some of this year’s pronouncements were simply a reiteration of what he had been stating in the past. The President tried to make it a point to get the attention of the public through his hard hitting statements that sent the message that his administration means business in dealing with the country’s problems regardless of the expected obstacles he will meet as his administration tries to sustain the gains of economic growth and development, especially for the people in the countryside.
The SONA is simply a report card of the administration’s accomplishments for the previous year and what it plans to do for the coming year aside from dwelling with other equally important issues that should be given utmost attention by the government. An hour or so of speaking before the public is not enough for a leader to be able to satisfy the cross section of the society in terms of providing them the accomplishments of the government for the previous year and allowing them to go through the government’s plans for the coming year despite being confronted with numerous problems that affect national security and integrity. Let it be said that the President missed out on some of the aspects of development and governance during his SONA but it does not mean that the President forgot his commitments to uplift the growth of some sectors, like agriculture and fisheries.
In fact, he failed to underscore his administration’s timetable on the shift from unitary to federal form of government and his plans for the Bangsamoro autonomous region that is to be enhanced by the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) that was submitted to him. He forgot to announce that he will certify the BBL as an urgent measure side by side with the autonomy bill of the Cordillera which he earlier committed to do before Cordillera leaders in a meeting in Malacanang just over a week ago.
Let us not be saddened that the President failed to mention in his SONA about the region’s renewed quest for autonomy. Let us not cry over spilt milk but let us treat his non-pronouncement of the status of our region as a challenge for us to sustain the gains of our quest and continue to bring to his attention the snowballing clamor for self-governance and the support for autonomy towards federalism. Even the President admitted in his speech that federalism will be dealt with accordingly in the future and he was not able to outline a timetable for that purpose, thus, the chances for us achieving autonomy before federalism is much greater and has opened the floodgates for us to go all out in our third attempt for autonomy.
The President’s statement on autonomy in the SONA will no longer matter because it has already passed. What matters now is his much awaited certification of House Bill (HB) 5343, the proposed Cordillera autonomy bill, as urgent to be done side by side with the enhanced Bangsamoro autonomous region measure. We should continue the uphill climb to sustain our the integrity of region as a single political unit. Legal experts have time and again vouched for the legitimacy of the existence of an autonomous region within a federal state that is why let us keep our fingers crossed that Congress will enact the autonomy bill.
We should remember that there are numerous sensitive issues that confront federalism such as the division of the country into federal states, the mode of distribution of the country’s debit to the created federal states, the dissolution of the government agencies and the payment of benefits to the displaced State workers, among others, which will not be easy to rule upon unlike in an autonomous region where the issues being raised are purely parochial in nature with the answers right in our minds. It is high time for us to forego our parochial interests and work for the realization