THE MISSING TILE SYNDROME
(Speech delivered by Secretary Cerge Remonde)
Rotary Club of Makati
12 Noon Skytop, Hotel Intercontinental
Friday, June 23, 2006
A story is told of the White House visit by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, at the time of Pres. Lyndon Johnson. Towards the end of the visit, Pres. Johnson reminded the visiting Prime Minister that being President of 150-million Americans is no easy job.
   
Ben-Gurion looked up at Mr. Johnson sympathetically and told him: "In Israel, its also not easy being President to two million Presidents".

Our own President, considering the political tempests she has had to face from the few among us who think they are the President, must strongly sympathize with the Israeli Prime Minister's plight.

Yet, on the other hand, being the President to the rest of us, the 80-million Filipinos, Pres. Arroyo must feel the same weight borne on the broad shoulders of Pres. Johnson.

It is by no means an accident that while Pres. Arroyo had laid out the groundwork for political restructuring in her successful run for the presidency in 2004, there are others who insist, up to now, on a different road map. Unfortunately, it is a map that meanders around today's debilitating status quo, despite the growing public clamor for change.

In the highest traditions of democratic debate, they must be listened to, as every democratic leader listens to every voice in her constituency.

This is the process described by a political commentator in one of yesterday's (June 22) major broadsheets as the building of a national consensus. He was, needless to say, describing one voice among millions; propounding an agenda that echoed in large part the development goals affirmed by majority of Filipinos when they voted this Government into office. It is, however, at variance with the key targets of political reforms, now the subject of People's Initiative.

Beyond that, I must skip for the moment the reheated passions that drive the charter change debates.

Let me, in the meantime, just revisit with you the national agenda that was voted for in 2004.

I hope everyone has had his caffeine fix, to bear up with the boredom of going back to the 2004 run-up to the Presidency.

Together with a couple of others, I was running the media side of the campaign, so you'll have to excuse me if I lapse into greater details on that campaign.

Our program of government was spelled out in a 10-Point Agenda, aptly called BEAT THE ODDS. This was, in the cherished traditions of winning coaches, the playbook that we, in the coaching staff, had to learn by heart.

BEAT THE ODDS is: Balanced budget; Education for all; Automated election; Transportation and digital infrastructure; Terminate hostilities; Heal the wounds of EDSA; Electricity and water for all; Opportunities for livelihood; Decongest Metro Manila; Develop Subic & Clark.

BEAT THE ODDS!

Have we beaten the odds? In many ways, we have. And entering the median year of Pres. Arroyo's 6-year term, the results are already out. At least in part.

We, in Government, through the media group which I head, have persistently preached the targets of BEAT THE ODDS, and the results in many fronts have been significant.

Yesterday, the country's leading national daily, and my favorite, The Manila Bulletin, through one of its columnists -- my wife's favored reading, obviously --had occasion to talk about some of the latest on BEAT THE ODDS.

At the risk of being immodest and if you will allow a little self-promotion, I refer, of course, to my twice-weekly column in the Manila Bulletin, Tuesdays and Thursdays, under my own name and photo. And if the Manila Bulletin's circulation shall henceforth kick up on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I shall boldly go to my publisher, Dr. Emilio Yap, to claim my bonus.

Levity aside, as I reported in my column, there are many exciting things happening in the labor, manpower and education sectors.

TESDA, in its report on the Technical Vocational Education and Training Outlook for 2006 to 2010, reported a projected growth in demand of highly critical and critical skills of 3.7 million, with 100,000 in the highly critical group, which includes the Business Process Outsourcing or BPO industry. In addition to OFW remittances, BPO revenues have helped keep our economy on-track, despite the buffeting from external factors and internal politics.

The CHED-TESDA Ladderization Program will benefit 20,000 students for 2006-2007 alone, by allowing freer exit and entry points within the ladderized courses, leading to open job platforms while pursuing a college degree.

Substantial investments in training are being made, including outlays for BEST JOB FIT that will help direct career choices, and match market and training.

In basic education, emphasis has been on english, science and math competencies, where recent testing shows the urgent need for improvements.

In english, for instance, while the national achievement tests in both elementary and high school consistently inched up, much still needs to be done. Elementary level went up almost 10% for 2003 and 2004 (48% to 59%); just 1% for secondary (50% to 51.33%). Mastery tests for 2004 - 2005 are at a dismal 26% and 7%, respectively.

English, as we all know, is getting special attention because of the BPO industry.

In any case, the infusion of US$200M into education should help address these deficiencies.

Higher education, plagued by the problems in the pre-need industry, has adopted strategies to broaden access to higher education. It has also strengthened industry-academe linkages, and is re-engineering curricula to improve quality and job-skills matches.

In Labor Market Opportunities, the Overseas Employment Prospects continue to hold bright promise over the next (4) years, up to 2010. Certainly beyond the term of this Government.

If I may quote my favorite column from yesterday's Manila Bulletin, which set out in some detail The Cabinet Reports:

"Among workers most in demand in the immediate term are nurses, call center operators, information technology professionals, engineers, and skilled miners among others.
From the United States and Spain alone, which are our two main former colonial masters, there is a present demand for more than one million nurses.
There is no way that our present training system for nurses can cope with this demand for, among others,

lack of training hospitals. Discussions were made on investing in the upgrading of the country's hospitals to accommodate more nurses trainees or to reduce by half hospital training hours. In the US, nurses are only required a minimum of 100 hours of tertiary hospital training. Our present minimum requirement is 500 hours."

We have today a work force of 35 Million.

In neat packages setting out crisp targets and strategies, these are but a few of the lead agencies that drive our struggle to BEAT THE ODDS.

As your programme today must surely describe me as Head of Government Mass Media Group, many of you may be wondering why I have not said a single word about GMMG.

Corporate communications, corporate social responsibility, corporate philanthropy, issues management, media relations, even crisis management, are buzzwords you come by on a daily basis, and you will perhaps wonder if indeed GMMG or my Government Mass Media Group is part or all of those buzzwords.

I can assure you, we are all those. And more.

As you must have seen in the earlier part of my presentation, we have good programs. As you might also wonder, the virtues of those programs notwithstanding, there are hardly enough, let alone many, who are aware of what those programs mean to our children, and the generations yet to come.

Unfortunately for many, and tragically for the country, there are those who among us make a career out of debating the inconsequential and focusing on the non-essential.

At various times, this has been called poison politics. Even destabilization. For sure, the only thing to be debated in this regard is the level of toxicity, and its damage to the country.

The bad news is, as I think many will agree, in many instances, we are ourselves the millstones on our neck.

The good news, on the other hand, is we can actually surge forward, as we remain firmly on-track in this flat world.

If in the past we had been obsessed with the missing tile, we showed in 2004 that there are many other and better tiles than that which is missing - and that is BEAT THE ODDS.

And to those who see wisdom and need in replacing the missing tile with a new one, then there is charter change, through ConAss, or People's Initiative.

Thank you. Now you can have me for dessert.

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