(Read the transcript of Mrs. Arroyo’s farewell address here.)

In a televised address last night (June 23), Mrs. Gloria Arroyo gave what Malacanang described as her last speech as president. Consistent with the “legacy” propaganda of government, an aggressive and expensive campaign that started last year and has produced numerous advertisements (worth more than P845 million in 2009 alone), a P10-million parade last June 12, and recently, two books, Mrs. Arroyo declared confidence that she is leaving a nation “much stronger than I came to office”.

In her farewell address, Mrs. Arroyo repeated her favorite themes: that she sacrificed popularity to do the right things such as raising taxes (including the notorious VAT reforms); but she only did so in order for government to have more money for education, health and job creation; that as a result we had 37 quarters of uninterrupted economic (GDP) growth; that as a result we had new and better roads, bridges, and other infrastructures; and that 9 million (yes, 9 million) new jobs have been created.

But there are many things that she did not say in her speech. She did not say that while we had 37 quarters of uninterrupted growth, we also had nine years of double-digit unemployment rate which is the longest sustained joblessness in history. Nine million new jobs? A simple comparison of the total number of jobless between the January 2001 and January 2010 rounds of government’s Labor Force Survey (LFS) shows an increase of more than 620,000 unemployed workers.  Such increase captures only a portion of how job scarcity has actually deteriorated as it does not yet account the quality of jobs available in the domestic labor market. (Note also that since its April 2005 LFS, the National Statistics Office (NSO) started to use a new definition of unemployment, which excluded discouraged workers and those not willing or available for work from the labor force. The redefinition had a net effect of “statistically” reducing the number of unemployed.)

She did not say that under her 9-year rule, the absolute number of unemployed workers has been pegged at about 4 million a year, significantly higher than during the time of former Presidents Joseph “Erap” Estrada (3.17 million); Fidel V. Ramos (2.58 million); and Corazon “Cory” Aquino (2.28 million). She did not say that her administration is the biggest exporter of Filipino workers, at about 1 million a year, because the 37 quarters of uninterrupted growth could not produce jobs for the burgeoning labor force.

She did not say that despite three-decade high economic growth, poverty has deteriorated with the number of poor Filipino families (i.e. living on around ₱1,200 a month) increasing from 25.5 million in 2001 to 27.6 million in 2006. (Preliminary data from the NSCB indicate that at best, there’s no substantial change in the 2009 official poverty figures compared to 2006 data.) She did not say that hunger incidence nearly doubled from 11.4 percent in 2000 to 20.3 percent in 2009.

She did not say that as she raised the VAT from 10 to 12 percent, and further expanded it to include power and oil among others, she also pinned government spending on health, education, and housing to their lowest levels while raising payments for government debts, which has also become her administration’s biggest source of corruption.

She did not say that she was the biggest spender on debt servicing but the most frugal on social services among all Philippine presidents. Every year since 2001, the amount of debt servicing has been equivalent to 42.7 percent of annual government expenditures and 67.4 percent of annual revenues. Meanwhile, combined government spending for education, social security, health, land distribution, and housing does not even account for half of what the Arroyo administration was spending for interest and principal payments.

Mrs. Arroyo said that she is leaving behind more roads and bridges, a stronger economy. She did not say that she is also leaving behind a gargantuan budget deficit of P162.1 billion in the first five months of 2010 alone, already higher than the first half deficit ceiling of P145.2 billion, and a 2009 full-year deficit of P298.5 billion, an all-time high in absolute terms. She did not say that from 2001 to 2009, the average national budget deficit was pegged at P148.37 billion while the average deficit as a percentage of the GDP was 2.93 percent, both historic highs.

There are many other things she did not say – how she persecuted her critics, including the 1,000 plus victims of extrajudicial killings, the 200 plus people who were abducted by her security forces like Jonas Burgos, and those like the Morong 43 that they placed behind bars for trumped up charges to silence them; how she called up Garci in 2004 and asked for a 1-million vote lead over the late FPJ; how she, her husband, their relatives and friends milked public coffers and government contracts dry; how her officially declared net worth jumped by more than 114 percent during her presidency; and how she and her friends  dined in New York for almost P1 million.

There are many other things she did not say.

She did not say goodbye, which reminds us that she will still be very much around.