“Twenty-five years after Edsa, where are we on that promise?”

As the 15^th President and as the son of Filipino hero Benigno Aquino and Former President Corazon Aquino, he is not exempted to those other former President who cannot solve the main problem of our country—Poverty.

June 30th, 2011 marked the first year of President Benigno 'Noynoy' Aquino III as the 15th President of the Philippines.  His much-anticipated first State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA) had been positively and negatively received by the masses.  Poverty is still existing and unfortunately escalating. Beggars and dislocated indigenous peoples are now enduring in the streets. Poor people eat, sleep and wake up in bangketas, esteros and karitons without even realizing why they are in such condition. Christian Monsod also said that “It is not only guns that kill. Poverty kills. It is slow death from hunger, from diseases that we thought no longer existed, from the loneliness of a life with an empty future. It is also the dying of dignity”. The inequality of income has not changed since Edsa and that since studies show that there is very little of a middle class to speak of, this means that 99 percent. But why are we still locked in this problem? There is nothing wrong with Politicians having wealth and power and special connections, but there is something very wrong about the great imbalances and the use of these advantages to influence the politics and policies for their own interests or deny or delay justice to the 99 percent of our country. This, this must change. Empowerment program for the poor must be called. A program designed to provide care for indigent mothers and keep malnourished children in public schools was a positive initiative to prevent the poorest from falling in society. It should also cover environment nurturing and rehabilitation, climate change adaptation, housing, rural and urban poor infrastructure, among others. Cart off also the war and conflict between regions and people. Let justice be swift and indiscriminate, especially in cases between the rich and the poor. We should also never forget the guardianship of our environment. The government has so far failed to take aggressive steps to address environmental degradation and the ill effects of climate change, including coming up with early warning systems, stopping logging, and mining.

The task today is no less heroic than at Edsa it is liberation from the yoke of poverty that would make democracy more meaningful to the poor. Mr. Aquino is too preoccupied with putting his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, to jail for alleged corruption and electoral sabotage that he has forgotten to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Overcoming poverty requires the decisive reform leadership from the center. Filipinos must join force on, calling on the President to refocus the whole governance system in support of the aspirations of the poor.