President Aquino’s inaugural speech was criticized by some for being full of motherhood statements and not mentioning the needed specific actions. What is wrong with that? In his inaugural speech, P-Noy need only to state the tone of his new administration without the details because that can still wait when he finally delivers his first State of the Nation’s Address (SONA) not long from now when the new Congress opens.

In his address, P-Noy vowed to fight poverty and corruption, carry out justice for all, improve our infrastructure and finally do something to our education and health which sufferred from budgetary neglect in the past. He vowed to put a closure to the many questionable dealings of the previous government. The details is really where the devil is. Besides, the details take some time to prepare. It is easy to agree on our broad national development objectives. It is not so when it comes to the path that we have to follow to reach them.

For an underdeveloped country like the Philippines, the broad objectives can be set based on our main areas of concern.Who can argue with the priorities set by P-Noy in his inaugural address? Most of the former Presidents, including Arroyo, also had almost the same agenda of fighting poverty and corruption, building more infrastructure, and improving the education and health of our people.

However, they also had almost the same record of failure. Either they only paid their objectives lip service or pursued them only for propaganda purposes. Objectives can be good but they are also useless when they are not matched by appropriate policies and strategies in the formulation of programs or are implemented halfheartedly.

If things were only planned and done well in the past, many of our present problems would have been resolved. Despite the promises to cut down poverty, many of our people still have very little food to eat, live in shanties, and cannot afford to send their children to school or pay for their hospitalization. Infrastructures are good only in a few areas, leaving many places unattractive to investors.

Fighting poverty is not easy, but we have seen that it is also not impossible to defeat it. Many of our neighbors were once poor also but where are they now? Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong already belong to the high income or developed world while China, Malaysia and Thailand are in the upper half of the middle income group. We are still better off than India and Vietnam but at the rate they are growing, it will not be long before they overtake us.

What went wrong with us? Too much politics and little economics or business sense are what did us in. Look at how we make decisions in government? If it is good politically in the short term, shoot, but if it is good only in the long run and does not help one to win in the next election, nevermind. Also, instead of business, many of the best and brightest among us are in policy where the returns for self and family are high but very low when the politician contributes unselfishly to the common good.•