It was how to make our lives better. I am referring to almost all of us who compose almost 99.999% of the population. Remember that this is a rich country but 90%, that is almost all of its wealth, is controlled by just 24 extended families.
At least in the first SONA there were a few things for us. There was the promise of an executive order, which was issued later, embodying the principles of the so called “freedom of information.”
There was also the promise (which was also fulfilled) to give a chance for the small people to get out from the clutches of usurers. This was the allocation of one billion pesos for micro borrowers who usually go to the neighborhood usurer when they run out of cash which was very often.
These were missing in the SONA last Monday, not even a progress report on how these might have fared. Were people really benefitted?
What could have been added were programs to economically empower the people. A well-greased program to make cooperatives widespread by providing incentives for those existing to be able to expand and assistance to those still to be formed would have effectively delivered the message that this administration is really after the welfare of the masses by economically empowering them.
As things are, cooperatives, particularly the struggling ones receive no assistance from the government. For the ordinary people in the street, he might even be unaware of the fact that the small people’s hope is to pool our minuscule resources together to be able to come up with a business or businesses that can make us financially independent. Otherwise, we will always be where we are. As one smart aleck put it, “kain, tulog lang.” To expound on that, we go to work everyday and what we make is just enough to sustain ourselves and families for the next day. And it goes on and on until we die. No hope for making it better in the future.
Cooperativism can be made widespread by requiring big businesses to come up with employees’ cooperatives for their workers and providing the seed capital for such. These should be considered the CSR (corporate social responsibility) of every big business. These actually don’t require much capital. Just a pittance actually from the earnings of big firms, but should be enough to assuage any feeling of guilt among big business owners for having made big money while the multitude are just “kain, tulog lang.”
Another thing that should have been in the SONA is expanding the financial and technical support for MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises). As of now, any financial assistance to this sector is very, very small even if they comprise the backbone of the country’s economy.
Lastly, the amount of one billion pesos supposedly to make usurers irrelevant (as aforesaid) is also very small. Why not allocate ten billion pesos for the program. After all, we are spending hundreds of billions for just one infra project.
Without meaningful programs for the masses such as those mentioned here, the rich will just be getting richer while we will be stuck where we are.**