LOWDOWN, TOO
By Jojo Robles

Nearly two years into this Noynoying administration, a pattern of governance (or the lack of it, really) is clearly emerging. Both the blackouts in Mindanao and the pullout of the last remaining direct flights from Manila to Europe, sadly, fit only too snugly into this template.

First, government is warned of dire consequences if a looming disaster is not addressed; government ignores the warnings. Then, the crisis erupts and the government scrambles – too late – to resolve it.

Warnings ignored, crisis hits, damage (probably irreparable) done. Wash, rinse, repeat. The power situation in Mindanao, for example, had been foretold even as far back as the final years of the Arroyo administration. Electricity has always been a hot-button issue on the island because of the inadequacy and high cost of generation from the aging hydroelectric plants that provide the bulk of power there.

Businessmen in Mindanao have long agitated for more generation infrastructure to meet growing demand, including the rehabilitation of existing facilities both hydro-based and using more traditional sources like diesel and coal. But apart from appointing a former classmate to head up the Department of Energy and making noises about renewable power in his early speeches upon his election, President Noynoy Aquino has never spelled out a proper energy generation and distribution policy.

Then the daily blackouts that now last up to four hours a day started. Aquino was rudely awakened from his slumber and, after he finished blaming his predecessors, started flailing around for a solution. He appears to have found in a proposal from his allies in the House of Representatives, who suggested that the President be given broad "emergency powers" to solve the problem with a minimum of fuss.

The truly amazing thing is that, had Aquino and his officials been just a little forward-looking instead of Noynoying, the Mindanao power situation would never have reached crisis proportions in the first place. And now that a full-blown emergency has taken place, the only response of government is to seek powers that will allow him to skirt provisions of laws like Epira, which prevents the band-aid solutions that caused power costs to shoot up since the Ramos administration.

But Fidel Ramos is definitely not Aquino – or his mother, from whom Ramos inherited the blackouts that were the legacy of the Cory administration's similar cluelessness about the power situation. Ramos had to solve a crisis from the very beginning, while Noynoy Aquino had to wait for nearly two years before even acknowledging it.

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The pullout of Dutch carrier KLM follows the same unfortunate pattern. The airline, which not only serves hundreds of thousands of Filipino workers based in Europe but also provides the only direct link of what tourists still come to the Philippines from that continent, was not an overnight affair. Since the beginning of last year, the local KLM office warned that the taxes on passengers and cargoes levied by the Philippines – taxes no other government charges on airlines, by the way – were making its operations unprofitable.

At least Aquino responded to the warning by directing his transportation secretary to look into the airline's complaint. In the House, a proposed law was drafted seeking the lifting of the onerous common carrier and cargo taxes that KLM wanted removed. That was last year. This week, KLM pulled out of Manila, saying nothing has really been done about their complaints.

Tourists and Europe-based Filipinos now have to pay for Noynoying about the airline taxes, in the form of competing for seats to and from Manila via other countries' airports, on top of the additional costs and inconvenience of making connecting flights. The belated passage in the House – which can so quickly act on stuff like Chief Justice Renato Corona's impeachment – appeared to just add insult to the injury that Noynoying by both Aquino and Roxas on KLM's problems had already caused.

It's ironic that Aquino spent most of the week refuting the Noynoying charge by citing supposed economic gains of his administration so far, despite the prevalence of business-crippling blackouts in Mindanao and the KLM pullout that hurt both tourism and Europe-based Filipino workers. And Roxas also came out in defense of Aquino by attempting to put a positive spin on Noynoying, which the transportation secretary said was actually a good thing.

But all the declarations of Aquino and his minions that government has improved the lives of Filipinos nearly two years into this administration cannot erase the fact that official inaction, benign neglect and political distractions – all of which are embraced by the catchall term Noynoying – caused both the power crisis in Mindanao and the pullout of KLM. Actions, after all, always speak louder than the most insistent and all-encompassing propaganda that government can muster.

We hear you, Noynoy, because you always talk a good game. But we can't believe you, because you never deliver.*