‘Prove me wrong’ was the big challenge of President Aquino to his detractors on his veto of House Bill 5842 that would have increased the current pension of about 2.5-million Social Security Service retirees by P2,000. The current destitution and scandalous pension of P1,200 is roughly about $25 a month and is way below the two dollars considered to be the absolute minimum for an individual to survive for a day.
President Aquino is missing the point in the whole debate. No one is questioning that the SSS pension fund, which has been projected to run out in 27 years, will go bankrupt in about 13 years if he had signed the bill. It is more a question of leadership and the quality of team Daang Matuwid to manage the institutions tasked to provide services to the more needy segment of the population. On this score, President Aquino has been a failure. From responding efficiently to natural calamities to pension of retirees, he has shown complete indifference.
In spite of the rhetoric coming from the Palace, President Aquino has done the least for the welfare of retirees. Not one SSS executive has explained why collection efficiency is hovering around 35 percent and why despite this, the SSS leadership had the temerity to award themselves bonuses to the tune of hundreds of millions of pesos. Their only solution is to increase pension contributions. Is that the best that they can do?
They should find ways to double their collection effort before asking for increased contributions. If they are successful in this endeavor, this will go a long way in extending the life of the pension fund while at the same time have some funds to increase the pension of SSS retirees. As it is, the Aquino administration increased SSS pensions once and only by 5 percent, the lowest any President ever did.
This debate is also all about the public looking for a demonstration of understanding and compassion from their leader. Sometimes, it is how one does and says things and not in what has to be done and said that matters most. The President should have shown more empathy to his constituents who need the pension increase most and not the bombastic and clinical challenge that he issued.
It is like when he said “you are still alive, aren’t you?”
But what can we do? The President is who he is and there is nothing that we can do to change his style. One former SSS administrator advised everyone not to rely solely on pensions to support retirement and this is true enough. But the brouhaha is not about those who are able to follow that advice but about those who cannot. Surely, if this administration can set aside tens of billions of pesos for its Conditional Cash Transfer program, it can find a way to make the lives of these SSS pensioners a little more bearable.
While we are talking of increasing pensions, the question that we should also ask is how Team Daang Matuwid is preparing for its own retirement. We know that President Aquino is working hard to get his anointed successor win by hook or by crook so that he and his band of merry men will get the much- needed protection if the administration candidate wins. But what if the administration bet does not win? Then the whole charade about this bogus straight path program will be exposed and a lot of those Daang Matuwid people will most certainly go to jail. What a spectacle that would be!
Most of team Daang Matuwid in the Executive Department have not accumulated enough time to qualify for a pension from the Government Service Insurance System and therefore will have to try to find ways to prepare for retirement in order for them to be able to maintain their current lifestyles in case something goes wrong with their plan.
One source coming from the Palace tells us that the activity of those officials occupying sensitive positions has increased tremendously. Many of them are busy doing a lot of things but that source refused to elaborate any further. Well, that kind of information is nothing new. It happens every time there is a looming change of administration. There is always that mad scramble to protect ones interest and that is why the stakes in this coming election have never been higher.
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It seems that Senator Juan Ponce Enrile has a “deep throat” inside the Palace who provided the so called new evidence that he will use when the Mamasapano hearing resumes.
Information has it that all documents relating to Oplan Exodus were ordered destroyed some time ago but someone in the Palace kept copies and sent all or some of the documents to the office of Senator Enrile. There are obviously some disgruntled people there and when this kind of thing happens, it is usually a sign that all is not well in paradise.
The search is now on to determine who the Judas is inside the Palace. The footage showing the veteran senator saying that he has new evidence without elaborating should be proof enough even for skeptics to see that he does have something new. Oplan Exodus was not conclusive in the last hearing because a lot of issues were muddled by allies of the President. Now, we have a second opportunity to get to the bottom of the truth. The nation deserves to know the whole truth about a military operation participated in by their President wherein 44 of its best fighters lost their lives.