Traffic along Edsa, according to the Spinmeister-in-Chief, is a sign of a booming economy. But when you're burning fuel without getting anywhere on the gridlocked main thoroughfare of Metro Manila, why is it that you never think of the improving economy – only of epic government failure?

“It is good that our problem is the traffic on Edsa, because when many people are on the road, it means that our economy is very much alive,” said Aquino. “This is better than having no traffic on Edsa because people can't buy fuel to run their vehicles.” 

I don't know if I want to laugh or cry at the utter, breathtaking stupidity of this statement. And I wonder, since I have time on my hands as the traffic on Edsa slows to a halt: Is it the President who's stupid or does he think all of us are stupid?

Understand, when it comes to traffic on Edsa, there is simply no upside, as President Noynoy Aquino would want us to believe. Government neglect, nearsightedness and inefficiency (and the resulting chaos on the streets) are simply not a matter of the glass being half-empty or half full; this is not a question of Aquino's supporters seeing an improving economy while his critics observe only gridlock.

When Edsa becomes a giant parking lot several times a day, six days a week, it is not a partisan event. Only the members of Aquino's Cabinet will thank the Almighty for the improved economy when they are caught in traffic – assuming that there are still Cabinet members who don't have motorcycle outriders and “sweeper” vehicles with blinking dome lights to steer them through gridlock.

(You never hear the high-and-mighty on the streets anymore, because sirens have been disallowed. But that doesn't mean that you don't see them, counter-flowing and disregarding traffic lights with their usual abusive security backups and arrogant “hawi” cops on big bikes. Such is the hypocrisy of the “daang matuwid.” It's as if, by making the sirens inaudible, the government has eliminated the abuses of its officials on the road.)

Of course, there is the small matter of how Aquino quantifies the economic improvement he says is taking place when the main circumferential highway is clogged with vehicles. After all, the National Center for Transportation Studies has already calculated that traffic in Metro Manila alone has already cost P137.5 billion in actual and productivity losses in 2011.

Are we to subtract this huge amount from the economic gains that Aquino says traffic brings, in order to arrive at true growth that year? Or shall we just welcome even more traffic and chaos on our streets, because they are signs of the ever-improving economy?

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The problem with Aquino's “traffic is good” theory is that it reduces the problem to one of perception while simultaneously absolving the government of culpability. Since traffic is really a good thing – except for the people like you and me who are caught in it, apparently – nothing needs to be done anymore.

Instead, because there is slow- to non-moving traffic, we should actually be grateful. And the people who get angry and curse the government, the Metro Manila Development Authority and its mulcting enforcers, the bus operators and their undisciplined and drug-crazed drivers are actually against economic development that traffic is evidence of.

In all likelihood, these carpers are probably the few remaining supporters of the political opposition or of the impeached chief justice. Aquino has already declared traffic good, after all; as we know, only Aquino's critics dare challenge the truthfulness of his statements.

The other thing about Aquino's harebrained traffic management (or non-management) policy is that it reduces the problem of Edsa gridlock to its absurd extremes. In Aquino's world, there is no reason for traffic other than economic activity, in the same manner that the lack of traffic – like, say, in less chaotic and more wealthy countries – can only mean economic doldrums.

Indeed, despite Aquino's baldfaced lie, there really is no connection between economic growth and traffic because the two ultimately unrelated. Traffic on Edsa and the rest of Metro Manila can be solved, not by foregoing economic activity, but by a complex and conscious effort to improve the mass transport system, both by rail and by bus, building new alternative thoroughfares to the main road (including overhead expressways like in Bangkok), encouraging migration to the countryside and strict, consistent enforcement of the law.

This is not rocket science. But it's a hell of a lot more complicated than reducing the problem to a choice between economic growth and economic stagnation and more resistant to solutions by presidential sound bites.

And the problem of traffic on Edsa is certainly not going to go away through propaganda offensives like the ones that swept Aquino to power. Traffic afflicts us all, regardless of our political beliefs, and the solutions are hard and painful; but only Aquino (and perhaps his most rabid supporters) will ever see it as a good thing, because it most certainly isn't.*