Cheyenne Suarez

'He finally gets it': Analysts praise, chide BBM for curbing inflation, obsessing over P20 rice

Article (news)

David Dizon

ABS-CBN News

<div> </div><div> </div>(UPDATED) Two analysts on Monday alternately praised and criticized President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA) for “flipping the narrative” on topics such as corruption and battling inflation while obsessing over his campaign promise to deliver P20 rice.Makati Business Club executive director Apa Ongpin praised Marcos for setting the tone right from the start of the fourth SONA by using educated Tagalog that did not pander to the masses.“You know this guy, he’s found his voice. He’s really found his voice. He is now able to deliver ideas in a very accessible way without the pomposity of his father. You know that old post-war oratory, that sort of thing, no. He talks directly and none of this rhetoric and all of this stuff. He uses the right words and so on and so forth. His team did a fantastic job in terms of the research and choosing what to say about each topic,” he said in an interview after the SONA.De La Salle University professor Julio Teehankee said Marcos needed to reconfigure his political narrative after being dealt twin setbacks: the underwhelming performance of his Senate slate in the 2025 elections and the Supreme Court’s decision that halted the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.“More than the tone and the rhetoric of it all, it’s not only the form, the substance he delivered it in straight Filipino that is not kanto. At the same time, he is saying walang saysay itong mga numerong ito kung hindi ito nararamdaman ng taong-bayan, which I think is the overall theme of this year’s SONA,” he said.“He is focusing on development, kaunlaran, and that is the goal, the substance, the endpoint of his Bagong Pilipinas. Something he wasn’t able to articulate in his previous SONAs. It’s really development for the people.”One thing Teehankee noted in Marcos’ speech is that the President no longer focuses on just the numbers.“I think he finally gets it. He said ‘Ito ‘yung mga leksyon na natutunan niya sa nakaraang 3 taon.’ He finally gets it, ‘yung pang-araw-araw na suliranin na hinaharap ng ordinaryong Pilipino. Sabi ko nga sa interview sa akin…ang ordinaryong mamamayan, pumasok lang sa opisina at sa eskwela, Lahat, para tayong contestant sa Squid Game. Nakikipagsapalaran tayo. Napakahirap, no,” he said.“Ito siguro ang natutunan na rin nila, na tugunan ang suliranin ng ordinaryong mmamayan. I think he gets it this time around. I just hope he still has the time and the political will and the political capital to push through with all of these plans.”Ongpin, meanwhile, said Marcos took a big political risk in saying that he will fight graft and corruption after his own father was accused of widespread corruption.He also chided the President for talking tough on the proposed 2026 national budget, while failing to defend the proposed 2025 budget.“We at the Makati Business Club felt he should have done that in the 2025 budget. They hijacked it. They moved a lot of funds from education to these pork barrel projects, right? That’s where the corruption is. The lesson of that is the President must be able to defend his budget and control Congress because that is where the magic happened in the bicameral committee,” he said.Teehankee said Marcos flipping the narrative on corruption is “rich with historical irony, given the record of his family.” He acknowledged the risk that Marcos is facing, noting the President needs more political allies after his recent setbacks.“It has become one existential crisis for his presidency because he is going up against a still popular political brand. This opens up a window of opportunity, a political window of opportunity for him to reach out to other political forces whose interest against corruption might align with his war against corruption and I am referring to the business sector, academia, the church, civil society and all of these other groups who might be attracted to his clarion call against corruption,” he said.In the interview, Teehankee praised the President for saying the Department of Public Works and Highways will issue a list on alleged ghost projects.However, he also criticized Marcos for “obsessing” over his campaign promise to deliver P20 rice to Filipinos. “Na-obsess yata siya dun sa P20 na bigas,” he said. Ongpin praised Marcos’ economic team for the miraculous drop in the inflation rate from 6.1 percent in June 2022 to 1.4 percent in April 2025.However, he also criticized Marcos for promising Filipinos P20 rice until the end of his term.“I don’t know where his math is. You know this guy, I don’t understand his obsession with [it]. Dapat hindi siya nagbitaw ng salita. The basic math is this - before Marcos came to office, the farm gate price of palay was already at P18-22. It goes up and down. Let’s say 20. Of that, the cost of the farmer was about 14 to 16 pesos. That’s their margin, somewhere between 4 to 6 pesos. That’s palay. When you take that palay and you put it through the mill, there is a 60 percent recovery. It is not 100 percent. 60 percent is pretty high already. If you do the numbers, that 1 kilo of bigas, the cost of that is already at 40 pesos.“How are you going to get P20 rice out of that? Are you going to underpay the farmer? That’s what’s happening now. They liberalized the imports. We’ve gotten reports of farmers forced to sell their palay at P10, P12, just to recover something. It’s below cost. Talo sila on this whole thing. They really got to do the math on this issue.”“P20 rice sounds like a great target but P20 rice in 1972 is very different from P20 in 2025.”

Two analysts on Monday alternately praised and criticized President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s fourth State of the Nation Address for “flipping the narrative” on topics such as corruption and battling inflation while obsessing over his campaign promise to deliver P20 rice.

Two analysts on Monday alternately praised and criticized President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s fourth State of the Nation Address for “flipping the narrative” on topics such as corruption and battling inflation while obsessing over his campaign promise to deliver P20 rice.