The Alternative Budget Initiative-Social Watch Philippines (ABI-SWP), a broad civil society network, has expressed surprise why President Aquino made no mention of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) during his State of the Nation Address (SoNA) on Monday.

This was strange since these goals, set by the United Nations (UN), have to be met by 2015, a year before he leaves office, the network said.

The MDGs are a set of eight goals agreed by governments in the UN in 2000 and which comprise the country’s commitments to end the worst forms of human deprivation.

“With five years left to meeting our MDG targets, Aquino is at a crossroads: Will he be the President to fulfill the MDGs and go beyond so that no one is left behind, or will it be business as usual? Listening to the SoNA, except for the anti-corruption statements, it seems that he is veering towards the latter scenario,” the network said.

“The MDGs were a low bar to begin with. There is really no excuse why middle income countries like the Philippines would fail to deliver. In fact, the government should have achieved the MDGs a long time ago and should now be ensuring that no one will be left behind in its poverty eradication efforts,” said Isagani Serrano, president of the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM).

“For already four years, SWP and ABI have been telling government that it has to allocate more funding for health, education, agriculture and environment in order to attain the MDGs by 2015. Unfortunately, during the past administration that managed the MDGs for 10 years, social development expenditures were severely reduced to decrease the deficit,” said former national treasurer Leonor Magtolis Briones, lead convenor of SWP, which organized ABI.

“Now, we cannot help but worry that in the effort to contain the very huge deficit, the P-Noy administration will do the same as its predecessor,” she added.

Marivic Raquiza, an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines- National College of Public Administration and Governance (UP-NCPAG), said to achieve the MDG goals on ending poverty and extreme hunger, Aquino should give priority to asset reform like the genuine implementation of agrarian reform starting with the Hacienda Luisita.

“About 70 percent of the poorest Filipinos are the landless rural poor. The impact of programs on farming methods, irrigation, extension services and market facilities will be enhanced if farmers have decisive control and ownership of the land they till. The silence of Aquino on this issue, given his haciendero background, is deafening,” said Raquiza.

Raquiza said the main obstacle to achieving the goals on poverty and hunger eradication is an official development strategy that is not pro-poor. “It does not address the high levels of inequality in incomes, assets and opportunities. Government’s anti-poverty programs are a patchwork, piecemeal in its approach, and only provides ‘pantawid’ or short-term relief,” she said. “Unfortunately, SoNA does not inspire confidence that this will change.”

“It is ironic that in the first decade of the MDGs, environmental degradation in the Philippines has, in fact, worsened. The country’s vulnerability to climate change, particularly of the resource poor communities, was exposed,” said Jonathan Ronquillo of the La Liga Policy Institute (La Liga).

“The last 10 years under President Arroyo was a lost decade for the MDGs on the environment, with inconsistent plans and programs, weak implementation bordering on inaction and the lack of public financing,” he added.

“We call on Aquino to make a decisive and clear shift to a low-carbon, climate sensitive development backed up by programs and public financing for climate adaptation and mitigation. This should be reflected within the new Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP), the General Appropriations Act and the local government units,” Ronquillo said.