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I think people are not looking forward to the soaring oratory, the poetry of a traditional SONA. They are not even interested in bold strokes. What they want to hear is the to-do list in a wartime SONA that will spell out the battle plan against the pandemic. Specifically, they

There is a group of forgotten and neglected health frontliners to whom the nation owes so much—the social workers in public clinics and hospitals. The best belated thank you card that we can give them is to make their minimum pay equal to nurses, P32,035 a month, that of Salary

The Expanded Program of Immunization has a budget of P7.5 billion this year, to cover about 12 million individuals, from infants to seniors.  As of end of June 2020, only 2.8 million individuals, not even one-fourth of the target, have been vaccinated. That is the sad

The “PDL” stenciled on the prisoners’ OOTD stands for “Person Deprived of Liberty.” As we are still a government of laws, let us make sure that COVID will not change it to “Person Deprived of Life.”  Our congested jails—where prisoners are no longer packed like sardines, but

The “sana all” principle must be applied to the salaries of health workers in government, because a pay raise for one should cause a raise for all. The Salary Grade (SG) 15 entry level position of nurses should be recognized as the new benchmark for compensation for all licensed

The message is more important than where the messenger is.  Laurel did not deliver any, Osmeña just once, and Quirino via radio from a hospital bed in Baltimore, Maryland, USA where he was recuperating. The principal audience of the SONA are not the politicians inside the

Health-related announcements are better left to doctors. If the nation is the patient, let those trained to have good bedside manners announce the treatment.  We have to choose and curate the words we use, so nothing will be lost in translation and transmission.  We

Malacañang should augment the OFW assistance fund of the Department of Foreign Affairs, as the surge in Filipinos losing their jobs abroad has reduced the P1 billion fund to P300 million.  “That lifeline to our kababayans will be gone soon at the rate it is being

DTI should barter that off-the-cuff statement with common sense, and exchange it with a clarificatory statement that no law is being violated by neighbors swapping goods in the community chat group.  When you exchange a tax-paid shirt too small for you for tax-paid shorts

At a time when we need every media outlet to disseminate life-saving information, we don’t shut down the one with the widest reach.  When each and every job must be saved, we don’t cause the wholesale unemployment of thousands. When we need every tax peso collected so