Aquino says SONA will 'shock' Filipinos

President Aquino, shown here during Army turnover rights in Taguig City on Friday, says the depletion of the government budget is among the revelations that are surely to shock Filipinos when he delivers his State of the Nation Address on Monday. OPS

Prepare to be "shocked." This was President Benigno Simeon "Noynoy" Aquino III's warning when asked to give details about his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday. The President said the major points of his SONA include the government budget and the financial woes his administration is inheriting from the Arroyo administration. "Hindi ako comfortable sabihin sa inyo [ang detalye ngayon]. Basta magugulat kayo sa natira... masha-shock kayo (I cannot reveal the details now but I assure you, you will be surprised of what's left of the budget. You will be shocked)," Aquino said. Other than saying he would reveal problems with the government budget, the President refused to elaborate further. "Hindi ko naman puwede sabihin sa inyo lahat ng detalye ng SONA speech ko, baka wala nang mag-attend sa Lunes (I cannot tell you all the details of the SONA or no one might attend on Monday)," he said in jest. The President also revealed that his speech would contain at least five "discoveries" he made when he assumed office. "There will be a minimum of at least five, two of them you will be very very surprised, at the things we have uncovered," Aquino said. Aquino said when he and the team drafting the SONA came up with a "24-page, single spaced with point 16 [font size]" document, his reaction was "this is too much." "I have to be very very careful of what I say because I might make the wrong impression," he said. The Palace had earlier said the current version of the speech, now on its fifth re-write, has 15 pages and would take around 30 minutes to read. He assured the public that his speech would "shed the truth on many things, in terms of gaining knowledge." Shocking figures About the budget, he said he and his team shared the same sentiment when they read the status reports submitted to them by various agencies at the end of Arroyo's term. "The common reaction out of all of us was, 'What? They did that?' No sense, no rhyme, no reason,'" the President said, adding that these reports served as his basis for crafting his speech. After receiving the "shocking" figures, Mr. Aquino said he has already asked the Budget department to "resharpen their pencils and compute again." He said it is important to know the remaining budget for the year so that his administration would be aware of the limitations, and the things that have be done next year to address these problems. Out of the P1.54 trillion budget in the General Appropriations Act, around 77 percent had already been spent, forcing his administration to make do with only P500 billion. What made matters worse was that most of the remaining budget, or about P300 billion, had already been allotted for automatic appropriation, he explained. "Unfortunately, ang iniwan ay hindi actually disposable. Iniwan ito na may commitment. So iyong iniwan na pantustos sana, may automatic appropriations (Unfortunately, what they left us isn't actually disposable. These have been committed for something else. What they left us, they are under automatic appropriations)," he said. He added that the depletion of the calamity fund for 2010, with five more more months to go before the year ends, is one of the budget problems that greeted him when he became President. Of the P2-billion calamity fund, almost 70 percent had already been spent, according to the Budget department. – Mark D. Merueñas, VVP, GMANews.TV