INTRODUCTION
PCCI chairman Aurelio Periquet, PCCI President Jose Pardo, my comrades in managing our society’s need for immediate action to the problems now confronting all of us:

Thank you for presenting with me eloquent statements of your proposals for urgent action by the incoming administration.

It is testimony to your deep concern and understanding of the problems of the hour that in just a day of meeting, you have come up with this proposed agenda. Unlike the usual conferences, which embroiled in debate and long discussions, consensus has been quickly reached and sealed.

That to me is indicative of how long all of us have been reflecting on the problems facing the nation. We know them in our homes. We know them in our offices. We know them in the streets.

And we have also long known the answers — except that the massive machinery of government has not been quick to make the decisions and apply them.
BACKGROUND
When we convened during our plenary session this morning, we applied our combined insights in spelling out of concrete action agenda for the consideration by the incoming administration. At the outset, your individual and collective energies today were expected to result in realistic actionable items, with defined timetables, and implementation vehicles and impressed.

I fully concur with the sense of urgency expressed by the different workshops. You have succeeded in prioritizing the various action items. This historic conference has launched the momentum for constructive change.

The country and I owe all conference officials and participants a sense of gratitude for making policy deliberations swift and decisive. You have been enlightened and empowered partners in the process of governance.

In response to all of you, I address your sense of urgency with dispatch. The time for relegating recommendations on policy measures for detailed bureaucracy study has run out.
EARLY ADMONITION
It is time to help the conscientious and competent bureaucrat by phasing of those who are not. For there is no room in the incoming administration for the lethargic public servant with a small open drawer. There is no place for the public officials that are so overwhelmed by the ramifications of policy measures that they are unable to decide on urgent matters. Every public official must be fully cognizant of policy issues and be forcefully decisive. There should be no tolerance for the public officials who engage in analysis paralysis.

Our country has lagged behind in the international and regional community of nations. We can no longer afford to procrastinate. The ranks of the country’s poor have greatly expanded. Time is running out.
C OUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS
Responding to suggestions aired during the workshop, there will be a council of advisers composed of respected leaders of various sectors. The council will be composed of private sector representatives. Cabinet members will be available on hand to provide governmental perspectives on various issues.

I concur with your earlier suggestion to form, as separate entities from the council, presidential action groups within the office of the president. These groups will not duplicate or conflict with the function of the line departments but will monitor and expedite action programs.

The President will meet regularly with the council. If necessary, the President should meet with members of specific presidential actions groups whose spheres of interest involve urgent contemporary concerned that need to be acted on. I anticipate that the Presidential Action Group on Energy should be meeting with the President more often until such time as the energy crisis would have been effectively addressed.

The presidential action groups should have a well-defined, time-bound agenda of actionable items. Meetings should be utilized to provide status reports on progress achieved and what needs to be done to hasten the implementation process.

There must be prescribed finite time constraints for achieving prescribed action items for substantially attaining overall objectives. We should expect many of these action groups to self-destruct well before the end of the term of the incoming administration. Failure to do so would be tantamount to failure in achieving the targets and objectives of the action groups.
COMMENTS CONCERNING WORKSHOPS TOPICS
We should expect all cabinet members to be cohesive , with strict adherence to central policy directions. They should be people-oriented and dedicated to public service, with a special bias in favor of the poor. They should be performance-oriented, imbued with a high level of ethical values.

1. The workshop on people empowerment and local government code has produced imaginative priority action items that should be implemented immediately after the next administration is sworn into office. There will be an executive order allowing government financial institutions to invest countryside development projects with training, enterprise incubation and divestment components. Sss and gsis funds will finance, on a greatly expanded basis, the acquisition by employees and small investors of shares in privatized government corporations. The other recommendations on people empowerment will definitely be implemented.

2. Toward the objective of improving the peace and order situation, personal emissaries will be sent to military rebels, NDF, MNLF. As a minimum goal, peaceful modus vivendi goals will be pursued, reconciliation under the constitution will be sought as an ideal goal.

3. To speed up the administration of justice, the judiciary will be requested. With due regard to the separation of powers, to prepare a program to significantly reduce the log jam in the dockets. A fresh approach is needed. Again, time-bound action programs should be prepared and religiously monitored. It is hoped that managerial techniques will be more significantly pursued at different levels of the judiciary. This objective will certainly be a major performance yardstick for the Department of Justice. This department will also define and implement a program that will remove unfair built-in advantages against the poor.

4. We would require the department of the interior and local government to hasten the implementation plan for the local government code that minimizes disruption. We should expect from the DILG a master plan for the consolidation of fragmented political forces to more fully assert people empowerment.

5. On energy matters, we concur with the observation that the country should have adequate power reserves. Private sector participation in B-O-T projects must receive special encouragement. More and more, power pricing should be market-oriented. While energy problems are being addressed, we should not lose sight of the important responsibility of protecting the environment. To this end, there should a plan to operationalize the Philippine Strategy for Sustainable Development.

For oil, power, telecommunications, and foreign exchange, among others, the board of investments should reorient its posture from regulation to investment promotion. A foreign exchange rate that is more realistic and competitive would be proper to enhance our international competitiveness. Economic managers will be required to present realistic plans for reducing public deficit, the foreign debt burden, graft and corruption, and economic crimes. There should be a simplification of tax and customs rules and regulations.

7. In perspective, the incoming administration should be judged early enough by its achievements during the first 100 days. Based on he insights and action programs you have productively defined, the government’s priorities will include stability, energy, economic recovery, livelihood generation, streamlining of the bureaucracy, and protection of the environment.
CLOSING REMARKS
Let me turn, as we close this conference, to an underlying principle. I have been speaking for sometime now about the principle of empowerment as the bedrock of my program and my administration. Let me emphasize here one aspect of the principle, because it is so crucial to our success in the days ahead. To lead effectively, a president does not only harness the powers vested in him by law. He must also empower others. He must enable them to act, and act effectively.

Programs die on paper when the powers and the means to make them alive are not shared.

Systems fail to function when the channels of implementation are clogged by responsibilities imperfectly shared and poorly distributed down the line.

In what should be done in the first hundred days of the presidency, nothing is clearer to me than the fact that power must flow from the office into the sinews of government and the private sector. While decisions must be made by the president, the work must go down the line. Everyone must take part, or our agenda will perish in the vine.

All of you should find comfort in the thought that the new government will always be action-oriented. The recommendations submitted during the workshops and the plenary session just ended will be part of the program of the various presidential action groups.

Over the next six years, we should closely collaborate toward achieving substantive objectives for the widest segment of the country. The time for ending deliberations has come. The time for decisive action has arrived. Let us get this society back to its mandated development mode.

In keeping with your earlier admonition, let us not just get our acts together. . . It is time to “just do it”!

Maraming salamat po.