EXCELLENT

IF Pres. Rodrigo R. Duterte, by his own confession, is an average student in school, he definitely knows how to lead and the nation gave him an unprecedented net satisfaction rating of 72%. That doesn’t seem to be a passing mark, but in the scoreboard of rating agencies, like the Social Weather Station, that makes up for an excellent performance.

SWS conducted three surveys in 2019 to track the people’s pulse on how the President's performance impacts the people. The first was in June 2019 with a satisfaction rating of +68 and the 2nd survey was in September 2019 with +65. Both survey results translate to a “very good” satisfaction rating.

On December 13-16, 2019 SWS again undertook an independent survey and the result was a record high at 82% and in fact unprecedented. The average of the three surveys would give us the net satisfaction rating of Duterte at 72% an enviable EXCELLENT grade devoutly wished by his peers moreover devours the opposition in frustration and defeat.

The result sends an eloquent message of the people’s overwhelming trust for their leader and is a testament of the nation’s accord on how he runs the government and addresses compelling issues that relate to crime, corruption in the government bureaucracy and private corporate malfeasance that compounds the misery of the people.

The last quarter satisfaction rating of 82% is the most significant as it comes in the heels of President Duterte’s assault on what had been considered in the past as the invincible oligarchy that had held and toyed with the totem pole of power from the Executive, Legislative and the Judiciary.

All these started with insatiable avarice. The two water concessionaires of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System – the Maynilad Water Services, Inc. a consortium of Metro Pacific Investments Corporation of Manny Pangilinan and DMCI Holdings, Inc. of the Consunji conglomerate and Manila Water of Ayala Corporation.

The two concessionaires were smarting from their obligations to provide a sustained supply of water in Metro Manila and put the blame instead on the government for not allowing them another round of water rate increase thus resulting in losses. Then came the decision of the Singapore Arbitration Panel ordering MWSS to pay Manila Water P7.4-billion for refusing their demand for a rate increase. This is apart from an arbitration case that Maynilad also elevated to the SAP demanding P3.4-billion for the delayed implementation of upward tariff adjustment.

Duterte, who by profession is a lawyer and by practice is a prosecutor, dug into the provisions of the concession agreement and found the terms untenable. An enraged President bathed Ayala, Pangilinan, and Lopez with magma of expletives warning them of imprisonment. Their retinue of propagandists warned of the consequence of the President’s threat. They employed the scare tactics claiming that investors will bring their capital elsewhere. The political opposition trumpeted that the contracts entered into by the government with the private sector are legitimate and protected by the constitution. These counter-threats only infuriated President Duterte the more as his legal team discovered additional shenanigans committed by the concessionaires among them the collection of fees which had been going on for decades from water consumers for ghost sewerage projects.

The discovery of lopsided provisions in the  MWSS-concessionaires agreement prompted the economic team, led by Finance Sec. Sonny Dominguez, to review contracts that previous administrations had entered into. Now under close scrutiny is the lease agreement of some 37 hectares of land of the University of the Philippines and, again, with an Ayala Corporation. The 25-year lease is P10.23 billion worth of combined lease payments and investment value it poured into the property.  Also to be probed are the agreements between the government and LRT and MRT operators which involved the oligarchs.

Despite the scare of flight of investors, the Philippine economy expanded by 6.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 on the resumption of government spending, bringing the full-year economic growth to 5.9 percent which is the 2^nd fastest in Asia. Not bad at all considering that the investment grade of the Philippines remains steady.

While the top oligarchs in the country had their shock treatment the 82% of the people are satisfied with the action of President Duterte. The chastisement that the big business is getting is just a tender rap in the knuckles. The way to go is to review the agreements and correct the onerous provisions on the bases of what is fair and just, pay your taxes and loans from the government financial institutions which had been written off by the corrupt officials in the past.

Otherwise, with that Excellent performance, President Duterte may declare a Revolutionary Government tomorrow and the nation will celebrate.