Once again, I'm going to start with my now usual caveats, those very things that I'm sure will be taken as signs that I have no backbone and no principles.

I've been watching the State of the Nation Address every year for the last... good heavens, is it almost two decades? I have been writing reaction pieces to them since Noynoy Aquino was still president. And yes, I know how angry I was back then, and how a little more zen I am right now - and that very fact, I'm sure, will be taken as a sign that I have always been a Marcos apologist and therefore is one of those people destroying this country you so love.

Actually, again, I've been changing. I'm sure I've talked many times about how my experience working with (not for) the government has informed my perspective on things these days. But, one, working with the administrations you don't like does not make me a supporter of those administrations; I was never a fan of the Dutertes, and some of the more important things I have done with the government was under that presidency. (And may that presidency never be followed with another one.)

Also, two, government is not the monolith we paint it to be. I have worked with secretaries and undersecretaries, as influential a people as you can get in particularly government agencies, and even then the things they push for don't necessarily happen, because everyone is pushing for their things. But it doesn't mean the agency is totally ineffective. In most cases, they end up doing the best they can do in the circumstances, or provided the budget, let's be honest.

But I understand how frustrating it can get. Bongbong Marcos talked about how this government has become much faster in responding to the needs of certain sectors, and in that moment I guffawed. Fastest? He talked about how the government was on top of things quickly by declaring a "national state of energy emergency" when fuel prices began to spike uncontrollably due to the war in the Middle East. Fastest? Insert that Maja Salvador GIF. Fastest?

I remember very well the day the US and Israel first attacked Iran. My boss and I had just landed in Manila; we were in Tagbilaran for, incidentally, a seminar where we were tapped as resource persons to provide regional government officials an idea of how important supply chain is. In that moment we knew what was going to happen. Oil prices will rise suddenly and steadily. Those who drive for a living - jeepney drivers, bus drivers, TNVS drivers, and also, truck drivers and logistics personnel - will ask for more money so they can cover the higher expenses. The prices of everything else will also rise. And then we will start worrying about our oil supply, especially since we import all of our needs and therefore we are more vulnerable to price and supply shocks.

That first week focused, for better or worse, on the drivers. It was, after all, the easiest angle the news can take in the early days of a fuel price crisis. It was only in the second week when I got an interview request asking for our perspectives, and the moment I spoke on TV Patrol was when more people in government realized, or remembered, the longer-term effects. (But the people I work with have known early on, because we have impressed that fact on them early on.)

It would take two more weeks of that uncertainty - and a handful of frenzied consultations - until the president declared the "state of national energy emergency". Three and a half weeks since the war broke out. Three and a half weeks since we rang the alarms. Fastest? Insert that Maja Salvador video clip for full effect.

If the government was a monolith the response would have been snappier. Arguably, maybe, things would get better. At some point I realized that the neighboring economies we often benchmark with are those that are more, err, centrally-managed. China and Vietnam, being communist countries, have every aspect of their economies planned centrally, which is why they can build infrastructure before the demand arrives - because the demand is something they have also determined and induced beforehand. Indonesia may now be a democracy, but it has always had a strongman leader which dictated how things should go.

Now, am I saying we need a dictator? No. That's not the silver bullet. I mean, we've had the elder Marcos rule for twenty years and all we got was... well, we got little, and they got a lot. And then we flirted again with a strongman in Duterte, and instead we had a bungled response to COVID-19 that led to more lost opportunities than we could realistically afford. And we're still fighting these days. Remember what Bongbong didn't talk about. The impeachment trial of his vice president resumes tomorrow.

Also, imagine if we did have a strongman now. Would we have any opposition to our participation in the Pax Silica Initiative?

So, yes, I watched the State of the Nation Address - this one's a well-crafted speech, at least - not for the accomplishment report, because I already knew it wouldn't be accurate, but for the immediate priorities. Bongbong has suffered from perceptions that he has been slow to act - although arguably his cabinet is also his persona, so does he really have to visibly be there? But what he can do is set the direction, and admittedly his administration has been wobbly in that regard, not helped by the unholy alliance that put him in Malacañang - the alliance that has since unraveled spectacularly. He doesn't quite know how to thread the narrative he has to make, in part because he clearly had to throw that away before the midterms, when he and Sara Duterte publicly fell out, and he allowed the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte while paying lip service to the idea of not returning to the International Criminal Court.

What he did say - what he did dwell on - is interesting. There was talk of a better standing in the international stage, which benefits from how low his predecessor brought it to. There was token chatter on the evils of social media, and additional tax relief to ease the cost-of-living crisis, and surprisingly, a mention of increased PhilHealth coverage for therapy for children with developmental disorders. But he must have spent a lot of time on energy - on ensuring we have a stockpile of fuel, on keeping electricity costs down, on improving our energy independence, even (once again) reviving talk of embracing nuclear energy. Maybe he could own this the way he attempted to own exposing the flood control scandal last time. He did get his loudest ovation when he called on for an amendment to the law to stop utilities from charging consumers for their own inefficiencies.

But the SONA isn't supposed to be riddled with policy-speak; it's designed to paint the narrative, to provide us with an idea of where we should be headed. The devil, as always, is in the details. So many details, to be discussed endlessly, especially when objections are raised, as is the case with Pax Silica. I can imagine Bongbong would want to get that through quickly, because it hits many birds with one stone: an economic legacy, a better international standing, an outsourced industrialization policy... never mind the water.

But then, we also want things to be done quickly. Make it happen now. Say no, definitely, now. Get it done now. Be truly the fastest government, right now. No, yesterday. But that means you can't raise any heckles when things go south.

The question is, what is it that we truly want?