Senator likens Arroyo’s SONA to a Friendster list

Now that the minority is the new majority, GMA would be better prepared and use Facebook next time around. 

 Senator likens Arroyo’s SONA to a Friendster list

Posted July 24, 2007 19:21:00(Mla Time)

INQUIRER.net
Veronica Uy

MANILA, Philippines — (UPDATE) President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's State of the Nation Address (SONA) seemed more like a Friendster list than a development roadmap, Senator Pia Cayetano said Tuesday.

“Like last year's SONA, the speech sounded like a Who's Who list of the President's closest friends and allies and the infrastructure projects they had asked from her administration as reward for their political loyalty,” said Cayetano.

She said Arroyo’s hour-long speech at the opening of Congress Monday “resembled a Friendster list, but failed to address ordinary people’s concerns.” Friendster is a popular social networking site on the Internet.

Critics said this year’s SONA became a virtual roll call of Arroyo’s allies in Congress and the local government.

Cayetano, using the yardstick of delivering basic services to the people, gave the President’s seventh annual address a failing mark.

She said several crucial targets in health, education and poverty reduction not met by the Arroyo administration were not substantially discussed in the SONA.

“We're way off some of the targets that the government itself had laid down (under the Medium Term Philippine Development Plan),” she said. “Basic health and education are among the closest to the hearts of our people since these involve basic services that they always expect to hear about in the President's SONA.”

Cayetano cited the following statistic:

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