(Following is the transcript of the segment "Analysis by Winnie Monsod" which aired on News on Q following President Arroyo's last State of the Nation Address on July 27, 2009.)

As expected, the President put the best face she could on the accomplishments of her administration – this is not unusual, as all her predecessors have done the same thing.

Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales asked her to admit to her failures, but the last time she apologized to the country for inappropriately talking to a Comelec Commissioner, that apology was twisted beyond recognition, and was interpreted as admitting to cheating. So I didn’t think she was going to make the mistake of admitting a shortcoming.

But were the accomplishments that she bragged about accurate?

On the whole, they were, and her administration certainly had many – particularly on the fiscal, financial and monetary side, as well as on the infrastructure side, such as roads, airports, bridges.

But one would expect such accomplishments.

After all, the amount of resources she had at her disposal since 2001 – that is to say, the sum of the national government annual obligation budgets from 2001 to 2009 – amounts to P8.963 trillion (almost 9 trillion pesos – that’s 9 with 12 zeroes after it), with the amount for capital outlays equal to P971 billion, or almost 1 trillion pesos.

So there must have been some accomplishments.

The issue is not whether she accomplished anything, but whether she accomplished what she set out to do, what she said she would do.

Unfortunately she did not get to that part in her SONA, and to be fair, her predecessors were just as cavalier about comparing accomplishments with targets – that seems to be the sakit of most politicians – they make promises and then forget about them.

As in the BEAT THE ODDS legacy that she said she would leave to the Filipino people by 2010. Notice that she made no mention whatsoever of BEAT THE ODDS .

B - Balanced budget,

E- Education,

A- Automated Elections,

T- Transportation and Digital Infrastructure,

T- Terminate Hostilities with the NPA and MILF,

H- Healing the wounds of Edsa's 1, 2 and 3,

E- Electricity and Water for all,

O- Opportunities for livelihood and ten million jobs,

D- Decongestion of Metro Manila,

D- Develop Subic and Clark

As I said earlier, on the whole, the accomplishments she talked about were accurate. With two very glaring, and very important exceptions.

The first is that she reported that the number of poor decreased by 2 million during her watch, and I almost fell off my chair.

The latest objective data we have is based on 2006, and official figures show that the number of poor people increased by almost 3 million people – about 2.8 million people, actually. Where she got her data, I have absolutely no clue.

But I can state categorically that those figures are wrong.

The second glaring inaccuracy is in the claim on jobs created.

As I have said before in this show, 2.8 million new jobs were created between 2004-2008, or about 700,000 jobs every year. That is a far cry from the SONA claim that more than 1 million new jobs a year were created.

And an even further cry from her BEAT THE ODDS target of 10 million jobs in six years.

Then, there are what I would call the attempts to slide over the unpleasant facts.

One such is the education situation. Her target was education for all. What she said was that no developing country would be likely to attain that target by 2015.

What she didn’t say is that (a) she promised that everyone who was of school age should be in school by 2010, and that (b) the progress in that direction has been at a snail’s pace – (net participation rates went up by 3.54 per cent in five years when it should have gone up by 18 per cent in six years).

Moreover, it is very cold comfort to say that 700,000 poor families have been helped by the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino program – very cold comfort , that is, to the other 4.1million families who live below the poverty line.

On the other hand, she must be given credit for spunk.

She turned the tables on her critics, and gave them as good as she got.

She is one tough cookie, and she wasn’t about to go out with her tail between her legs as it were.

Her critics would call that being unrepentant and defiant, and kapal muks, and say that it was beneath the Presidential dignity, stooping to mudsling the way she did – but her Congressional audience clearly enjoyed her performance as much as she did.

I certainly am not going to judge her on that.

(Following is the transcript of the segment “Analysis by Winnie Monsod” which aired on News on Q on July 20, 2009. Prof. Winnie Monsod is the resident analyst of News on Q which airs weeknights at 9:30 p.m. on Q Channel 11.)

Last week, we started evaluating the performance of the President on her “BEAT THE ODDS” desired legacy to the Filipino people as listed in her Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP). We graded her according to the proportion of the target that she set that had actually been accomplished by the administration.

We’ve finished with “B.E.A.T.” – “B” for balanced budget, “E” for education for all, “A” for automated elections, and “T” for transport and digital infrastructure.

Now, let's examine the rest of her “BEAT THE ODDS” plan.

“T” FOR Terminating NPA/MILF Hostilities

The target is that peace will have come to Mindanao and all insurgency areas by 2010. Obviously, there can be no quibbling. This has just not happened.

Unfortunately, there is no quantitative way of determining how far along we are on the road to peace. I will go the middle-road between her critics and her supporters and give her a 50 per cent grade – in recognition of the administration's efforts and negotiations. Pasang awa (barely passing).

Now, “H” is for healing the wounds of EDSA.

The MTPDP lists the following action plan:
1. Accelerate compensation to victims of human rights violations; no action here, folks. Zero.
2. Consult people nationwide regarding their views on how to pursue reconciliation and national unity; this has not been done. So a grade of zero.
3. Provide safe venues, where both sides can interact – both oppressor and victim. Again, not done. Zero.
4. Pursue reforms in the military; attempts have been made and one would think that there would be some kind of result. Maybe 30 per cent done.
5. Design and implement creative approaches for handling conflicts involving leading figures of the administrations deposed in February 1986 and on January 2001. Very little done here.
6. Implement effective national security reforms with a balanced focus on both internal and external concerns – this is not relevant for us.

The result of all these is a grade of 30 divided by five which means a grade of 6 per cent.

Now, “e” is for electricity and water for all.
According to the plan, power and water shall have been regularly provided to the entire country. Where do we stand?

The most recent statistics show that around 80 per cent of households have access to safe water and about the same percentage (81 per cent) have access to electricity.

With respect to water, the progress has been at snail's pace... an accomplishment rate of 5 per cent.

With respect to electricity, the measurement we use is the percentage of barangays energized. This percentage went up from 89 per cent at the end of 2003 to 98 per cent at the end of 2008. There is every chance to reach 100 per cent by next year. That corresponds to a grade of 100 per cent.

But, if we use interenational measurement of percentage of households with access to electricity, that unfortunately has not increased over the next 5 years. It means a grade of zero.

100 per cent plus zero, divided by 2 is 50 percent for electricity.
Plus 5 per cent for water divided by 2, you get 27.5 percent. That's what she gets for the “E.”

Now, let's go to the “O.D.D.S.”

“0” for opportunity to create 10 million jobs.

Will she have created 10 million jobs in 2004-2010? The answer is NO.

Let's see why.

The MTPDP projects anywhere from 3.3-3.9 million of those 10 million jobs would be created this year and next year. So, we have to remove that from the 10 million to find out how she has performed so far.

That leaves 6.1-6.7 million new jobs that should have been created over the period 2004-2008. How many new jobs were actually created?

Per data from NSO, 2.8 million additional jobs were created, which means that the president accomplished 42 per cent to 46 per cent of her target employment, which means the Arroyo Administration's grade is 44 per cent.

Now, the two D’s – decongesting Metro Manila and developing Subic-Clark hub.

Decongesting Metro Manila, according to the MTPDP, will be accomplished among others by:

a) establishing new centers for government; that’s a grade of zero.
b.1) the Northrail Project; experts estimate a 10 per cent completion rate, so grade is 10 per cent
b.2) the Southrail project; accomplishment rate is much less than 10 per cent, considering that so far only the Caloocan-Alabang portion is finished. Grade is 5 per cent.
c) Improve transport within Metro Manila. Experts give this an accomplishment rate of 90 per cent.
Adding these three sub-targets (90 per cent +10 per cent +5 per cent) and dividing by three, the grade for decongesting Metro Manila is 35 per cent.

How about developing the Clark-Subic corridor, which includes the creation of Hong Kong or Singapore-type enclaves which are the most competitive in Southeast Asia?

Well, the SCTEX is completed, beautifully and that is a 100 per cent grade.

But, creating the most competitive Hong Kong- or Singapore-type of enclave is another matter altogether.

At most 30 per cent of that has been achieved and therefore, the average of the 2 is 65 per cent.

What can we conclude from all of these?

Well, the Arroyo Administration wanted to be remembered for a 10-point legacy with the acronym BEAT THE ODDS

If one were to grade the actual performance on these areas, here is what we get:

B - balanced budget - 100
E - education for all - 36.7
A - automated elections - 50
T - transport and digital infrastructure - 57.5
T - terminating npa/milf hostilities - 50
H - healing the wounds of EDSA - 6
E - electricity and water for all - 27.5
O - opportunity to create six million jobs - 44
D - decongest Metro Manila - 35
D - develop Subic-Clark hub - 65

If these points were “subjects” of the Arroyo Administration, then it would have passed one subject with flying colors, 2 subjects by the skin of its teeth, another 2 subjects with a low passing grade, and 5 subjects failing miserably.

That's a general average of 47.17 per cent – where 50 per cent is the passing mark.

The question that seems to be in the minds of people is whether she should be kicked out or she should be made to repeat.

But, aside from the legacy she wants to leave behind, Pres. Arroyo will also have to answer for 3 perhaps unintended legacies:
1. The increase in corruption
2. The increase in human rights violations
3. The increase in bureaucracy and overall demoralization of the civil service
These are going to be on her conscience.

(Following is the transcript of the segment "Analysis by Winnie Monsod" which aired on News on Q on July 13, 2009. Prof. Winnie Monsod is the resident analyst of News on Q which airs weeknights at 9:30 p.m. on Q Channel 11.)

Last week, we compared the Arroyo administration with previous administrations in the areas of economic growth and poverty alleviation.

And, we determined from the data published by the NSCB [National Statistics and Coordination Board] that while the country's economic growth did much better under Arroyo, poverty did not dramatically decline in her time and as a matter of fact increased between 2003 and 2006.

What we're going to do now is to examine her goals that she set for herself as organized into the slogan "Beat the Odds."

B for balanced budget.

The Arroyo government must be given a grade of 100 per cent.

The original target for 2007 was a budget deficit of 2 per cent and its actual deficit was only .2 or 2/10 of 1 per cent and last year 2008 it kept its budget deficit on track.

Next in Beat the Odds is E. Education for all.

This is broken down, by the way, into a 100 per cent net participation rate meaning to say everyone of school age is in school that's the most important.

The other subgoals are: 3,000 school buildings a year being built and a computer put in every high school.

Have these been accomplished?

At the elementary level, net participation rate or the proportion of the number of enrollees 7-12 years old to population 7-12 years old for school year 2003-2004 was 81.72.

By the way, in 2001 to 2002 that was already 97 per cent.

Anyway, it means that to achieve the education for all this percentage must rise by 18.28 percentage points in six years to reach 100 per cent by school year 2009-2010 as envisioned.

How much has it risen?

For 2008-2009, the DepEd reports an elementary net participation rate of 85.12 per cent.

In other words, in those 5 years it only increased by 3.4 percentage points in 5 years when it should have increased already by 15 percentage points.

The President therefore has accomplished only 19 per cent of her target.

So she gets a grade of 19 in this examination – a dismal failure.

This comprises 80 per cent of her grade for education.

The other 20 per cent would come from the two other targets – school buildings and computers.

With respect to school buildings, it was determined that the more appropriate target would be in terms of classrooms.

Assuming an average of 3.3 classrooms per building, which is what the statistics show, then you need 10,000 classrooms a year.

Well, the total number of classrooms built, as of June 15, 2009, amount to 68,888 for a 115 per cent accomplishment rate and so I give her 115 per cent for this particular goal.

With respect to one computer in every high school, I talked to Paul Soriano, a DepEd official, to get the data.

It turns out that it is not just one computer in every high school but computer lab composed of 11 computers, 10 for the students, 1 for the teacher in every high school that they are trying to achieve and the latest data showed 4,019 out of 6,650 high schools already have their computer labs – an accomplishment rate of 60 per cent, with another 650 schools in the final bidding stages and 325 schools having started the bidding.

Not only that.

Director Soriano also reported that the 2009 budget includes the money for the computer labs for the rest of the 1,631 schools that still don't have these computers and he is positive that by the end of this school year 2009-2010, all public high schools in the country will have been equipped with computer labs.

So for this computerization, I think the grade should be 100 per cent.

Aggregating these grades and giving them proper weight, 80 per cent for elementary school participation rate, 10 per cent each for buildings and for the computer you get a weighted average of 36.7 per cent grade for education.

Now for the automated elections.

Since the target that it will no longer raise a doubt about its integrity is a target that is impossible to achieve, given the tendency of politicians to insist that they lost because they were cheated, so we're not going to grade that.

But the target that the election process will be computerized was definitely achievable, particularly because the election computerization law was first passed in December 1997, and was intended to have been accomplished in 1998, or at the very latest, in time for the 2001 elections.

I would put a grade as 50. Why? It can go either way.

Then, we go to T for transport and digital infrastructure.

Under the transportation target, the Arroyo administration aimed at linking the entire Philippines through a nautical highway.

Per expert judgment, the Western Nautical Highway is 100 per cent complete so she gets 100 per cent for that and the Central Nautical Highway is 80 percent complete.

Now for the digital part of that infrastructure target, she gets a grade of 25 per cent. Why so low?

Simply because we do not have as yet our digital highway complete. And, why is that?

Because of ZTE and all the controversy that came about because of corruption involved in the bidding for that project.

So putting that all together, her grade for digital and infrastructure 90 + 25 divided by 2 she gets a grade of 57.5 per cent.

So that takes care of the Beat part of Beat the Odds.

Part 3 of our pre-SONA analysis next week, we will take care of “The Odds” part and also next week we will give the final grade of the Arroyo administration according to the goals it set out for itself. Meanwhile, this is Winnie Monsod on Q.

(Following is the transcript of the segment "Analysis by Winnie Monsod," which aired on News on Q on July 6, 2009. Prof. Winnie Monsod is the resident analyst of News on Q, which airs weeknights at 9:30 p.m. on Q Channel 11.)

President Arroyo has done better than her predecessors have as far as growth is concerned, fared badly in reducing poverty.


The State of the Nation Address or SONA that the President will be delivering on July 27 will be her ninth and last one.

No other President, except the dictator Marcos, who sat as President for more than 20 years, has held the presidency as long, and this being her valedictory, the SONA will surely deal with her administration's accomplishments.

Because this is a run-up to the national elections in 2010, more than the usual effort will be made by the administration to present its performance in the best possible light, while the opposition will be doing the exact opposite.

So, from a non-partisan viewpoint, what can be said about the performance of the Arroyo administration?

Let's start with broad strokes.

If we set as our metric the broad goals of economic growth and poverty reduction, and use as a basis of comparison the performance of her predecessors, here is what we find: in terms of the country's economic growth, President Arroyo has done better than her predecessors have, as we can see.

The average GDP growth rate of the country between 2001 and 2006 was 4.5, higher than that achieved by the others. I am not including GDP rate for 2001 and 2008 because as we will see our latest poverty estimates are 2006.

But if she did better than her predecessors as far as growth is concerned, she performed worse in the field of poverty reduction - as again we can see.

On a fixed level of living or consistent basic needs basis, poverty incidence went down by 6.5 percent during Mrs. Aquino's watch, it went further down by another 9.5% during Mr. Ramos' watch.

Under Mr. Estrada's watch, however, the percentage of people who were living below the poverty line increased and under Mrs. Arroyo's watch, poverty incidence first declined between 2000 and 2003, and then it increased such that the number of poor families increased by 650,000 and the number of poor people increased by 3.8 million people, between 2003 and 2006, so that for that whole period, there was no significant change in poverty, and the absolute number of the poor increased.

Now having done the broad strokes, let's get into a little more detail, to find out why the broad strokes look that way.

This time, we will compare her performance not against the performance of her predecessors, but against what she herself set out to accomplish, as stated in her administration's Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) for 2004-2010.

According to the MTPDP, and I quote: "By 2010, this will be the 10-point legacy of the Arroyo administration:

1. Ten million jobs shall have been created.

2. Everyone of school age will be in school. Three thousand school buildings a year shall have been built and a computer put in every high school.

3. The budget shall have been balanced with the right revenues collected and spending on the right things ensured.

4. The network of transport and digital infrastructure on which the Arroyo government embarked in 2002 shall have linked the entire country by 2010.

5. Power and water shall have been regularly provided to the entire country.

6. Metro Manila will have been decongested with economic activity growing and spreading to new centers of government, business and community in Luzon, in the Visayas, and in Mindanao.

7. The Subic-Clark corridor will have become the most competitive international service and logistics center in the Southeast Asian region.

8. Elections will no longer raise a doubt about their integrity.
The electoral process will have been completely computerized.

9. Peace will have come to Mindanao and all insurgency areas.

10. The divisive issues generated by EDSA 1, 2 and
3 will have had a just closure."

These all by 2010.

Rearranging these 10 targets results in the acronym "BEAT THE ODDS," which the Arroyo administration has used as its mantra.

Did she indeed beat the odds? We'll answer that in part 2 of our pre-SONA analysis next week.