Today, July 27, President Marcos delivers his penultimate SONA-his fifth, with only two more years and one more address left in his term. Five issues deserve more than a passing mention. These are, of course, not the only problems the nation is grappling with. Traffic remains crippling, the West Philippine Sea dispute simmers, inflation still bites, and the flood-control corruption scandal continues to unravel.
But artificial intelligence, creative professionals’ welfare, education, healthcare, and disaster preparedness should also be prioritized. These determine how well Filipinos learn, earn, heal, and survive whatever the next crisis brings.
One, artificial intelligence. The world is racing ahead, and we are barely walking. The 20th Congress is sitting on roughly 40 House bills and seven Senate bills seeking to regulate AI, yet the Philippines still has no central AI law; only a National AI Strategy approved last year and a patchwork of proposals for a Philippine Council on Artificial Intelligence. A proposed DOLE job-displacement program for workers automated out of their jobs exists only on paper. We are adopting AI faster than we are learning to govern it.
Two, creative professionals and freelance workers. The Philippines is one of, if not the fastest-growing freelance market in the world, with millions of Filipinos earning a living without contracts, benefits, or a safety net. These are our virtual assistants, writers, designers, riders, and so on. House Bill 1988, the freelance workers’ protection measure, and the POWERR bill for riders and online workers have been filed, re-filed, and endorsed by the ILO’s own Decent Work in the Platform Economy Convention. But it’s still pending. Our creative and digital workforce deserves so much more than this.
Three, education. This is the most damning number of all: only 70.8 percent of Filipinos aged 10 to 64 are functionally literate, according to the PSA’s 2024 FLEMMS survey. That means nearly one in three of us can read words without truly understanding them. The World Bank estimates 91 percent of our 10-year-olds cannot read and comprehend a simple story. EDCOM 2 found learning proficiency collapsing from 30.5 percent in Grade 3 to a mere 0.47 percent by Grade 12. Eighteen million high school graduates are functionally illiterate.
Four, healthcare. Advocates and lawmakers have been pleading, again, ahead of this SONA: raise the excise taxes on sweetened beverages and alcohol, pass HB 5003 and the Alcohol Tax Reform Bill, and use the revenue to properly fund PhilHealth and the Universal Health Care Act instead of leaving public hospitals and barangay health workers underfunded. Filipinos are getting sicker from what they eat and drink while the reforms that could fund their care sit in committee.
Five, disaster and climate readiness. The Philippines topped the WorldRiskIndex again as the world’s most disaster-prone nation, and ranks seventh in Germanwatch’s Climate Risk Index, with 371 extreme weather events and 27,500 deaths between 1995 and 2024 alone. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake off Mindanao killed dozens just weeks before this SONA. And billions meant for flood control were instead lost to the corruption scandal the President himself exposed last year.
So many months and so much money have gone into bickering in the Senate and the Lower House, into debates on matters that should never have taken priority, into politicking and the protection of personal agendas. Perhaps it is time, in these final years, for a legacy worth being proud of.