We senior citizens are old enough to know that all incumbent administrations use our social protection programs in bribing indirectly our electorate to vote for their anointed candidates.
They have done this in the past using the Social Security System, the Government Service Insurance System and PhilHealth. They now also do it using the newly legislated social pensions for indigent senior citizens and the still-unlegislated Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.
We don’t really mind if this administration’s bright boys use these programs to perk up the now almost-lifeless candidacy of former Secretary Mar Roxas.
After all, we are current beneficiaries of these programs and any benefit enhancement —however miniscule it might be—would matter much in our daily lives.
Denied of any benefit increase in the last six years, we think that we now deserve some last-minute tokens of compassion from this administration before it vanishes into oblivion starting July 1.
This is why we have even begged PNoy to increase our SSS pensions by P2,000.
Like the ones before them, PNoy’s bright boys are pragmatic, shrewd and Machiavellian in the pursuit of their undertakings. They employ all possible resources that are available at their disposal and even crisscross the thin line that divides the legal from the illegal means.
The list of these controversial undertakings is now long. It includes the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona through the simultaneous release of billions of pesos of pork barrel funds to key politicians who acted as jury in his trial, the incarceration without bail since October 2012 of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center despite not yet being convicted by any court, and the illegal planning and execution of Oplan Exodus to arrest international terrorist Marwan that resulted in the massacre of 44 Special Action Force commandos.
They must have known by now that we cast our votes to the candidate who promises the most to improve our benefits but blacklist those who threaten to reduce or take them away. It is like choosing the highest bidder in an auction.
And so we thought that to win votes, this administration’s bright boys would risk the programs’ solvency by granting our demands for higher benefits.
Listen to how the administration bets claim credit for these programs’ enhancements and vow to expand them as if they were their party’s exclusive franchises.
Alternatively, they warn about their discontinuance if beneficiaries do not vote for their candidates. This, we heard from the now-so-quiet social welfare secretary when she spoke before a general assembly of 4Ps beneficiaries.
Of course, we now also hear rival candidates denying any program discontinuance while they promise to improve and expand them.
Surprisingly, no one is pursuing the P2,000-increase in SSS pensions except its original sponsor, Rep. Neri Colmenares, who is now running for a seemingly lost battle to get elected as senator.
But there is still a slim chance that PNoy would suddenly swamp us with increases in pensions and other social protection benefits a few days before May 9. The timing would then leave little opportunity for raising questions against their propriety.
That single window of opportunity is on Labor Day on May 1, which is the universal day to appreciate workers, whether employed or retired.
That kind of announcement on that day would be his administration’s last-ditch effort to cling to power.
Unfortunately, the social protection institutions have performed badly in 2015.
PhilHealth’s premium collections were P1 billion short of benefit payments. Despite massive government subsidies, it had to dig into its P7-billion investment income to make up for this deficit and to pay for all of its huge operating expenses.
Trying to justify this contribution-to-benefit deficit, its president suddenly issued mystical words that:
“We operate on a pay-as-you-go system where we immediately translate what we collect into benefit payments for our members.”
He boasted of annual benefits that steadily grew from P34 billion in 2011 to P97 billion in 2015, but kept quiet about the fast increase of non-paying and highly subsidized members and what we now pay out-of-pocket when we enter a hospital.
Obviously, he has no basis in concluding that “there is no reason for our members and other stakeholders to worry about.”
Our pension agencies are neither in a position to grant any benefit increase.
GSIS has dropped its net income to P48.85 billion in 2015 from a record-breaking performance of P140.22 billion in 2014. It even lost P2.51 billion in the value of its financial assets.
SSS continues to confuse us with statements about its sterling performance and entitlement to a performance bonus while denying us any amount of pension increase.
We have not seen yet its 2015 financial statements—audited or unaudited—yet we know that it sinks deeper day by day into its quicksand of actuarial deficiency with its present contribution system.
With or without any manna dropping from Malacañang on May 1, the probe into the operations of these three agencies must be first in the agenda of the next Congress.
Only thereafter would we all know what is really happening.