‘Mr. President, why?’

MR. President, why did you disappoint us? Almost two million pensioners of the Social Security System (SSS) are now asking President Aquino why he vetoed the bill seeking a measly 2,000 monthly pension increase for the aging and ailing retirees.

The amount would have been a big boost in cushioning their monthly medical expenses. Maintenance medicines and doctors’ fees for their regular check-ups would have been lightened by the increase.

Mr. President, you have also disheartened members of our families.

It is a known fact that many average SSS pensioners still share a miniscule amount to the family’s everyday expenses – food, electricity, and water bills. Some even give a few pesos for transportation and sundry allowance of their grandchildren of school age.

Mr. President, why did you believe in the advice of your political enemy, Sen. Ponce Enrile, who said your approval of the amended SSS Act of 1997 will bankrupt the state pension fund?

Enrile is out to throw you into the fireplace where the almost two million pensioners, not counting members of their families, are waiting to skewer your candidates in the May polls. He has somebody else in mind to succeed your presidency and he is not your anointed one.

Sure, Rep. Colmenares and Sen. Escudero, sponsors of the bill, are on the other side of your political fence. But these days are one of those rare times that the two lawmakers are with you in improving a bit the quality of life of pensioners.

Many of these beneficiaries may not even last 10 years from now.

As a card-carrying senior citizen and an SSS pensioner myself, I felt elated when the bill was transmitted to the Office of the President last December 14, and I was confidently expecting your much-awaited signature. What a Christmas windfall it would be, we thought.

The signature on the dotted line never came.

My peers and this writer started entertaining ominous scenarios. Our inkling that a veto may be looming in the horizon where the cold Amihan wind was blowing came when the expected Christmas Day signing did not happen.

It would have been “a perfect Christmas gift,” the beneficiaries wished.

Mr. President, during the entire month of last December, the almost 2 million SSS pensioners were in suspended animation, but in high spirits expecting your signing of the bill.

These days, in places where pensioners pass their time away – coffee shops, barber shops, malls, mami-siopao outlets, and even at customers’ counters of Mercury Drug – everyone expresses a justified pessimism

“Di pinirmahan ni Presidente dahil sa kung ibigay daw sa atin ang 2,000 baka magsara ang SSS.” This is their collective repartee.

But they are also aware that the seven members of the pension fund’s board of trustees had already gotten their Christmas bonus of 1 million each earlier.

My peers got the first sign of the “bad news” in the front-page story of this newspaper in its Sunday edition of January 10, 2016.

A presidential spokesperson said the President is studying the future implication of the pension bill if it is passed into law.

The whole day of Wednesday, radio commentators in both AM and FM bands were urging the President to sign House Bill No. 5842. Did they have advanced information of the veto?

And then an editorial cartoon of the Manila Bulletin of January 13 appeared to be cryptic. A polo barong wearing man was holding a food receptacle that was oozing a broth ignoring an impoverished man behind him. Readers did not know how to place the representation.

The following day, Thursday, Sen. Chiz Escudero , in a vigilant stance, told the President in a newspaper statement – “Make the SSS pension bill your legacy.”

Then finally in the early afternoon of Thursday, January 14, I received text messages from four friends, all of them pensioners: “President Aquino has just disapproved the measure.”

Mr. President, now you know why we are disillusioned!